Fine Godless People
by Fernando J. Contreras
This article was originally published on Hades United.
The sermon of today is religion. I know, you probably already made up your mind, so why debate it?
Ever since I can remember I’ve been concerned with big ideas, so it’s no surprise that I tackle them in my fiction. I address topics like aging in a society that glorifies youth, the problems with charitable work, the detriments of entertainment, the value (or lack thereof) of human life, and so on. But readers find some of my characters puzzling. They tell me that they seem off somehow. I realized that the reason could be that most readers, just like most people, believe in some version of a god. They don’t know some of my characters operate in a meaningless world, and that the anxiety that comes with total freedom buzzes in the back of their minds.
To many of my characters there’s no deadline, no judgment, and no repercussions other than the laws of causality. There’s no mission or prize. There’s no god. So they have to reassess their reality, and find new meaning as they face the absurd. Because there’s no god, the weight of their actions is much heavier. They are responsible for all their choices, even if they are pointless. They live in a paradoxical state: they want to feel motivated, rewarded and full of purpose, but to do so, they must lie to themselves and then believe the lie.
Now, my characters are not me. I’ve made peace with the idea that there’s no god. I do feel the anxiety buzzing in the back of my mind all the time, but that’s just my survival mechanism firing up. It’s the part of my brain that reminds me I’m incomplete, and must keep working hard to learn more. In that way, I’m grateful I don’t feel happiness and comfort most of the time. Fulfilled people don’t win tournaments.
I also think atheism is humanity’s best option for moving forward. This is not a popular opinion, but I’m still writing it because I want you to see what I see. Maybe later we can debate in person, preferably while drinking wine.
I was raised Catholic because I was born in Mexico. If I had been born in Indonesia there’s a solid chance I’d have been raised Muslim, or Buddhist if I’d been born in Cambodia, or a Republican if I’d been born in Oklahoma. As a kid I was told what to believe. I was told to memorize the Our Father prayer, told when to kneel down, and to behave or else spend eternity in hell. That last precept was the one that kept me in line. I was terrified of Satan. Priests would speak of this Satan as a powerful force that works non-stop to poison our souls. Satan, I was told, tricks everyone into making poor choices that appear fun at the time, like playing tennis instead of doing homework, ordering that fifth gin and tonic, or committing genocide in the name of righteousness (that escalated quickly!)
Satan could only be understood in retrospect, so guilt was the result of his deception. The cure for guilt came in some form of penance, often administered by the Priest. I’d ask him, Why is the cure for feeling bad to feel even worse? “Because god wants it that way,” I was told.
When I was in my early twenties I gave it a good shot. I prayed, meditated, listened. And nothing.
And if The Bell Doesn’t Work…
In Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit, three people are trapped in a room. This is the afterlife, and it’s not pleasant. Communication to the outside can be achieved by ringing a bell. The occupants use a bell to call a concierge, and during the play, it’s rung several times. But then the bell rings sometimes and sometimes it doesn’t. There’s a debate about this. Does the bell work?
This was Sartre’s way of explaining religion and prayer. The characters in No Exit are tempted to believe that it’s them who are not operating the bell properly, but the operation of a bell is simple. One cannot say that the bell sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. In order to say that the bell works, it has to ring every time. That’s its function. After pressing the button, the bell must ring. Any other alternatives are phony excuses provided by those who want to maintain the status quo.
In the end, the characters find out that the door has always been unlocked, and that being trapped was their convenient assumption. Yet, they stay in the room. Why? Because they realize they are free, and freedom is a scary thing. It’s more comfortable to continue fighting the old fight than to face the unknown.
Vote Atheism
Atheism will not automatically cure our corrupt, selfish behavior. There’s also the fear that without god, violence and chaos will escalate. The problem with that argument is that we are filling the gap where god used to be with evil, and that doesn’t have to be the case. Love for humanity and respect for life can still be taught as an intelligent solution. Altruism can be practiced because it’s beneficial for all, and not because we are accumulating points for the afterlife. By eliminating the narrative of an afterlife, we’d be able to generate new goals for humanity. We could focus on developing better scientists instead of more celebrities and martyrs. We could become more resourceful and quit asking god for help. We could be responsible for our actions instead of believing that god has given us a destiny and that everything happens for a reason.
It’s a real concern that we don’t have a clear purpose as a species. Even if atheism makes it seem like the human project is meaningless, we continue to advance our understanding of how the universe works. That should be our priority, to augment our lifespans, knowledge, and travel in order to increase our wisdom. To hope for an afterlife VIP pass from a benevolent creator, especially when the only assurances of its existence come from the interested parties, is too high of a gamble.
This doesn’t mean Hades United is designed to promote atheism. It’s function is to create daring and thought-provoking art. Hades United is the publication of one of the 7.4 billion people who inhabit this tiny rock, which all it does is go in circles around one star, in a galaxy with billions of stars, in a universe with billions of galaxies.
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