Religion is a Mental Illness

If tacos make you you happy, why not? If dancing or competing or writing or studying viruses or caring for people gives you meaning and fulfilment, then why not? Meaning is whatever you find or make it to be.

Why do you think there is, or even should be, a single, right answer?

The idea that you would have a meaning dictated from on-high, when we don’t tolerate having our college, our career, our romantic partners (usually) dictated externally, is gross. Especially when that meaning is not even explained to people.

Just for argument’s sake, let’s say there’s this meaning, this purpose to life. A reason. Why haven’t we been told that reason? Is it a common reason? Or individual?

If it’s common, then how is any of us supposed to agree that it exists or what it is when we haven’t been told about it? Do bacteria in a petrie dish need to know or worry about the fact they’re all there to study antibiotics? All we need to do is live our lives. If we knew about it, wouldn’t that alter the outcome anyway?

If it’s individual, what if we can’t discover what it is? Do we get punished? If not, then the purpose doesn’t matter. If we do, then without any evidence of what it is, then that’s basically irrational torture. This is unreasonable.

Having discovered what it is, do I have to fulfil this externally provided meaning and purpose? If I do, then, again, torture for not being someone else’s idea of who I should be. If I don’t, then the purpose still doesn’t matter.

Consider the dodo, and its extinction.

What was the meaning and purpose of the dodo and its extinction?

If the dodo was not supposed to go extinct, is your god’s meaning and purpose for them ruined?

The only way out of this disaster that doesn’t render your god ineffectual and/or our meaning completely pointless is if your god is all-knowing and has a Plan. Everything is as it intends. Which refutes free will and makes prayer pointless. You can no longer blame the ills of the world on humans and their flaws and their free will. 

That is, evil - that it created - is as much a part of your god’s plan as your purpose or meaning. Rape, murder, pedophilia and pandemic viruses occur because people are simply acting out their purpose and meaning, to be simply materials to facilitate this Plan.

Would it make you feel better or worse to know that, for example, we’re here to convert oxygen and organic materials into carbon dioxide, and then fizzle out -  like pop-rocks in soda - leaving a carbon dioxide bubble which will be fed into a larger cosmological experiment? What makes you think that a “meaning” would be noble, or even meaningful to us?

This entity that is deciding and dictating human meaning - what is the meaning of its life, and who is setting that? If you expect a meaning to be supplied externally, then you’re on an infinite regress. Every answer itself requires another external explanation, another meaning. If the entity doesn’t require an externally mandated meaning, why do we?

Why bother with this mode of thinking at all? It goes nowhere.

If you believe in an eternal afterlife, then this life doesn’t even have meaning anyway. It’s a brief pitstop on the way to eternal bliss, right?

The bible says that only belief is required for salvation.

You already have that. It literally doesn’t matter what you do in this life. Kill as many people as you like, rape as much as you want, steal without reservation. It will all be forgiven. You already have your golden ticket. Now you’re just waiting to use it.

So, why would you need to find meaning in something that isn’t that important to you anyway? Aren’t you “Just Visiting”?

If heaven is perfect, then it is as perfect before you get there as it is after. It cannot be “more” perfect. This means that you don’t matter. It means nothing you can do in heaven matters. You can’t make it better or it would have been, by definition, not perfect. You don’t have free will, since that’s the cause of evil, and there’s no evil in heaven, right?

There can be no new ideas, no new discoveries, no new things to figure out. No risks to be taken, no challenges to be met, no obstacles to overcome. No change. No ups, no downs. None of the latter to make you appreciate the former. Otherwise, it could not, by definition, be perfect. Your only purpose is to feed your god’s narcissism.

That is, your purpose in heaven has absolutely nothing to do with you, only with your god’s bottomless, unquenchable thirst for veneration. You’re there as labor to toil in heaven’s slave mines, digging for more and more adulation to feed it. You don’t matter.

There is no risk, no potential for loss. Your eternal life is something you never have to appreciate, since you can never be without it, never even have to consider being without it. It’s something to be taken for granted. Your eternal unchanging, meaningless life is worthless.

On the other hand, when you realise this is the one and only life you get, that it’s finite, then it becomes the most meaningful, most valuable thing of all. Everything you matters, because you have only so much time available to you. Will the universe remember it? No. But it will be meaningful to you and to those around you. The religious don’t care about any of that - meaning has nothing to do with affecting or improving the world or the people in it, only about impressing Sky Daddy.

Are you unable to find meaning in the world around you, the people around you, the difference you can make? Is that because, since you already qualify for salvation, all you’re doing is waiting to die?

Don’t you people wave your hands vaguely around at the “everything” that is supposedly the evidence of your god? (Ignoring that, by definition, it cannot be evidence for your god when you cannot identify evidence for not-god.) So, in all this “everything” your god has supposedly made, from the rainbows to the coronaviruses, you can’t figure out a way to find meaning for your life in this real world? Advancing our understanding of light or meteorology (rainbows) or virology and epidemiology (coronaviruses)? Enjoying a rainbow or hiding from your god’s coronavirus with someone special?

You can only find meaning in the thing that (supposedly) created and sent them, not in the things that it (supposedly) created and sent? This would be like saying you can’t find enjoyment in Stephen Spielberg movies, only from Stephen Spielberg himself.

Take responsibility for your own life and your own meaning.

“Do I have to?”

Sounds the opposite to me. One of the benefits of being alive in this reality is all the challenges, the ups and the downs, the highs and the lows. It’s the change - the music of life, from one note to the next and then the one after that - that is what makes it worth living. We can influence it, change it, make it better, make an impression, which is our only true immortality.

As described by religionists, “heaven” never changes. It’s eternal, so you can’t have any kind of effect on anything, meaning nothing you do matters. Just the same continuous, droning note, which is ultimately just noise.

The most boring roads in the world are the flattest, smoothest, straightest ones. To the extent that one of the dangers they present to drivers is falling asleep.

If evil is caused by free will, as they keep telling us, then you don’t even have free will in heaven. If you did, then either “god” chose not to create this reality with free will but without evil (not-omnibenevolent) or couldn’t (not-omnipotent).

All you can do is praise and salute El Presidente and stroke its ego, pretending it’s “perfect” when, by definition of needing to be worshipped, it’s imperfect. For eternity.

They’re just marking time in this waiting room until they can die, not appreciating the fact they get to experience this life, when many are killed by god die too young to get to experience it. Throwing away the one life we know exists, the one where you actually have meaning, in order to get into the one where nothing you do matters, nor can be demonstrated to exist in the first place. (And yet, oddly, still want to lecture everybody on how to live their lives in this reality.)

What a waste.

Still, ask any Xtian having a heart attack or breathing difficulties whether they’d prefer medical attention or to simply move on per god’s Plan™, and they’ll pick the medical attention every time.

This is one of those questions that has taken me a lot of time to think and write through, and I’m still not sure I’m able to answer it adequately, or articulate it properly.

One of the interesting things about the afterlife/heaven myth is that when the chips are down, if you look closely, you’ll spot that there is very little genuine adherence to it. Most of the really strong commitment to it occurs among the extremists, particularly those who are willing and happy to die for whatever their cause is, absolutely certain that the glorious afterlife awaits.

Everyone else is desperate to continue this non-glorious, non-eternal, sinner-filled harsh mortal life, situated well outside the gates of their respective deity’s realm/domain/kingdom. The idea of the afterlife really only kicks in as a defence mechanism when the reality of loss strikes, such as when it’s already too late, as a comforting mechanism. A proclamation of being detached and separated from the natural world that has a cycle of life, from which they’re immune. Until that point, they will hang on to this realm like any atheist.

If they genuinely believed it, they would be absolutely certain that they would eventually see their friend or relative again, and their death should be not very much sadder than sweet Uncle Fred moving interstate, too far to visit, where there’s no internet or electricity, and where one at a time, everyone in the family will move there, reunited in the lovely holiday home in which he now resides.

A distant uncle of mine died, and although I didn’t really know him, I went to the funeral, mostly for my mother (her cousin or something). So although I felt bad for the immediate family and my mother, I wasn’t hugely emotionally invested in it. And I noticed that despite being very Catholic, the immediate family did not behave in any way that told you they were convinced they would see him again. This was it - he was gone. They spoke the words of “heaven” and “be with him again”, but actions speak louder.

Which is to say, don’t feel like they’re so separated from you as you think they are. In my (admittedly limited) experience with no more than half a dozen funerals, the believers are trying to convince themselves as a coping mechanism. Of course, the remarkable thing with placebos is that they can work even when you know it’s a placebo.

So, what’s the option for the non-believer? As with most things, and as simplistic as it seems, why not try reality.

As is usually the case, reality is more beautiful and amazing than the silly myths of the past. As described, free of evil, heaven must be a totalitarian regime, Celestial North Korea.

Can you explore the realm outside of heaven? What if the thing that gives you joy is figuring out how things work, or fixing things? Are there broken down cars in heaven for mechanics to fix? How can it be heaven if your car is broken down? Can you dig into the “ground” of heaven and be a “heaven-geologist”? Isn’t part of the joy of life all the change that occurs? The next thing and the thing after that and the thing after that? In an eternal life, either everything stays the same, or none of the changes that do occur matter. You can’t improve yourself, and you can’t make other people’s lives better. By definition, in heaven, you can’t make a difference.

As a “reward” for being a good believer, are you simply numbed by a narcotic, induced feeling of bliss, an eternal stupor spent simply praising the narcissistic overlord who made you a sinner in the first place, ultimately just meaning you…

For the atheist dealing with loss, grief and death, be grateful that there’s no good reason to think such a grotesque existence actually exists. Or, for that matter, the idea that there’s any way to assess and summarise an individual human’s complex existence into one of two words: “heaven” or “hell.”

Instead, recognise and appreciate the natural reality of life. We have existed. We got to live. There are millions of species that never made it this far. There are species today that are, unfortunately, coming to an end.

But we got to exist, and so did the person you’re grieving for. They existed at the same time as you, and you got to live together on the same, sometimes scary, often beautiful planet. Two entities, both formed of atoms brought together from across the universe, influencing each other in small ways and big, hopefully good ways, maybe even the bad ways. The reason it’s the most important thing in the world is because it’s fleeting and temporary - if it was eternal, you wouldn’t have to value it.

You found brief flickering meaning together - whether it was something deep and profound, or that you simply made each other laugh at stupid things - in an enormous indifferent universe. You found joy, comfort, drama, love, fighting, mistakes, forgiveness, tense moments, compassion - everything that is whatever that person meant to you and everything you meant to them. You did change each other’s lives, and were changed by them. You and the other people in their life. Something you share in common together as you remember and grieve.

There is nobody else around to appreciate humanity. We need to do it ourselves. Everything we mean to each other, everything we do for each other. The cycle of life is unavoidable. We need to understand and appreciate this. And it means that each of us will ultimately complete the cycle. It’s painful to us, but it’s necessary and sadly beautiful. Like everything, we live, we grow and we die. That’s how change occurs, and we’re part of that natural ecosystem of continuous change that surrounds us. We got to be part of the natural world, and not be separate or detached from it.

in the end, those atoms brought together from across the universe will one day be scattered again throughout the universe.

Talk with the other people who this person shared their life with and discover the reality of who they were. Take them down off any pedestal you may have had them on, strip out any preconceptions or assumptions you may have had about them, and discover who they really were, the things you didn’t know from parts of their life you may have missed, from their friends, from their relatives, from their possessions, so you can take an accurate impression of them with you. Warts and all. And appreciate them for it, and carry that with you.

Think about what you got from the relationship, what you gave, and what you will do with that in the future. How you’ll propagate that change forward. Did you learn something from them? An important lesson? Or even just a dirty joke? What will you do with it? Teach someone else - your kids, nieces/nephews, whoever - the same lesson or dirty joke and how you learned it. Because that’s what makes them live on.

And it’s okay if it takes time.