In July of 2003 I was pregnant with twins. I was happy, excited, and nervous, and looking back on it now I feel like I was in a state of pregnancy-related ignorant bliss. I was one of those people who happily use the phrases “I’m pregnant” and “I’m going to have a baby” interchangeably and I could foresee nothing but a happy ending to the story.
I was 18 weeks pregnant when my water broke. My husband rushed me to the hospital and the doctor told us we had less than a 5% chance of things working out well. Indeed, the next day an ultrasound showed that both babies had died, and the following day labour would be induced.
About an hour after I gave birth to my babies, a nurse came in to talk to us about ‘coping with our loss’. We were understandably upset and in a bit of shock, and I wasn’t really listening to everything she was saying, but I did hear her ask if she could call a priest, or some equivalent, for spiritual guidance. Being atheists we declined her offer, but she persisted and asked how we could possibly cope without religion in our lives. I politely assured her we would be fine, but she was not content to drop it. She sighed and told us that it would “be much harder to manage without God’s help” and she promised to pray for us.
I was already an atheist when I met this woman, but I didn’t really know why. I’d always known that nothing about religion made any sense. Surely, if God wanted us all to obey him, wouldn’t he make the rules clear to everybody? If God had given us our brains, didn’t he expect us to use them to question the world around us? Since the religious answers to those questions always seemed to be somewhat unsatisfactory, I didn’t believe in any of it, but this woman showed me why.
I’m really an atheist because religion is selling ignorant bliss – and I don’t want it. She wanted me to accept, on faith, that I needed God to make everything better. She wanted me to avoid grieving for my babies by believing that they were in heaven and that God had a plan. She wanted me to take the easy way out, so that I would feel better. As long as I ignored all the contradictions in the bible, the lack of evidence for any sort of higher being, and all the problems caused by religion meddling in this world, I could be happy all the time because eventually we’ll all be in heaven – problem solved.
If I have to trade a bit of happiness for the ability to think for myself – done. Yes, I was ignorantly blissful about pregnancy, and losing my babies took a lot of time and work to cope with. But I did it. I went through those feelings of sadness, anger and unfulfilled potential that make up grief and (eventually) I came out the other side stronger. That strength helped me to cope with the stillbirth of my daughter the next year, and then the births of my son and daughter who are now 6 and 3, and I wouldn’t change a minute of any of it.
There are a lot of terrible things in this world, and each of us has to go through some real crap, but I won’t trade any of it for instant happiness if the price is ignorance. I don’t mean to make light of anyone else’s suffering, and I don’t pretend for an instant that it’s an easy choice for everybody. I just know that it is possible to cope without believing in Santa, and it’s possible to cope without believing in God. To me, that makes religion not only implausible, but also unnecessary; atheism is the only thing that makes sense.
Cathy Oliver
Canada
There is a standard Atheist dogma which claims that religion is ignorance, while Atheism is intellectual. That is Oliver’s only actual point here. We can disregard her pique at the clumsy nurse’s intervention as an intellectual causal factor: Oliver was already an Atheist:
"I was already an atheist when I met this woman, but I didn’t really know why."
In fact, Atheism is nothing more than denial without substantiation. Oliver makes some arguments against God, none of which provide material evidence for his non-existence. For example,
…” all the contradictions in the bible, the lack of evidence for any sort of higher being, and all the problems caused by religion meddling in this world…”
These are boiler-plate reasons, recited in a knee-jerk fashion. I do not know if Oliver is a biblical scholar, but I sincerely doubt it since she merely drifted into Atheism early on for no known reason; so her unsubstantiated charge of biblical contradictions is without merit. The “lack of evidence” is the standard Category Error which Atheists use as an excuse. And the “meddling” accusation is without any particulars to discuss, so we are left to assume that actually Oliver doesn’t want any external moral restrictions placed on her own personal theory of acceptable behavior.
None of which disproves the existence of a first cause for the universe.
There is a secondary undercurrent in Oliver’s rejection, which is her understanding of Theism. According to her, Christianity is the easy way to “instant happiness” at the price of “ignorance”. Since Christianity is known inside and out as the “hard and narrow path”, Oliver’s understanding of the theism she rejects is not based on any deep understanding of it. Her understanding seems to come, rather, from concepts she has created in her own mind as to what it must be. And then she rejects her caricature, her straw man.
As for the price of ignorance, it is Atheists who reject any knowledge outside of their own sensory inputs. It is Atheists who resort to automatic radical Skepticism in dealing with non-material existence: ”You can’t prove that”. Yet they cannot prove their own prejudices: Philosophical Materialism and Scientism for example. Or even their own existence. Atheism does not add knowledge, nor does it add wisdom. All Atheism does is shut off avenues that are not Materialist. It is an investment in ideological ignorance. And that is what is posing as "intellectual".
The Atheist mind has closed down and sealed off a portion of reality, a segment which they deny exists without material evidence to back up that claim. At their best they demand material proof of a non-material entity. And then they claim intellectual superiority and to be evidence-based.
Denial without evidence to support the denial claim is not a rational, logical position. It is emotional wish-fulfillment.
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