God, atheism, and human needs

Religion has given meaning to millions, since time immemorial. For many of us, that meaning is of our own existentialist making. No acknowledgement of these fundamental needs, however, is put forward. Dawkins gives us ten atheistic commandments. Hitchens tries with the beauties of science and nature, the consolations of philosophy, with literature, poetry, art, music and architecture. They are presented as absorptions for a lifetime that do not depend on the supernatural, or “ghostly stories”. Wonderful as these pursuits may be, they are pastimes, pleasant fill-ins, without a deeper meaning beyond the normalities of our daily lives.

The failure to recognise the search for meaning is a criticism that must be levelled primarily at the philosophers among them, Onfray and Dennett. They are from the discipline that has, for 2,000 years, been asking this question of our meaning, our identity. These two do not even try. Do we adopt New Age beliefs? Or is it a transcendental vision of where the thinking of humans would want to take our world? Is it Ice? Or Speed? Our collective human consciousness?

And when we need comfort and reassurance? When a loved one dies? Is it meditation? Is it in the beliefs of other religions that these writers did not explore? Buddhism, for instance, that has no God? Or Daoism with its Three Jewels: - compassion, moderation, and humility? Or the teachings of Confucius, who also did not require us to pray to a God?

Or the beliefs and practices of the Druze, Zoroastrians, Hinduism or many other religions?

Religion gives support to millions. If our present day atheists want to fight for an extremely worthy cause - to eliminate the excesses of religion, they would be best advised to search for ways to reform the fundamentalists in the religions, along with fundamental atheists. The current approach of a vitriolic condemnation of basic human needs is unlikely to win many converts. The need for meaning, for a role and purpose in life is likely to maintain religious beliefs for centuries to come The practices might be as poorly observed as they are today, but the beliefs and the prayers will still be valued by those who have nothing to replace them.

If we search back through the atheist philosophies of the past, through Mill, Hume, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, we find a questioning - a gentler, agnostic questioning. A clear condemnation of the excesses of religion, yes, along with sincere doubts about a personal God, but accompanied by an acknowledgement that we do not know.

Charles Darwin states the obvious “the extreme difficulty, or rather impossibility, of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe ... as a result of blind chance … I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us, and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic”.

Along with the reality that we do not know - that of a universe without a beginning - the need for meaning, for purpose, is a base to our identity. The search has been of long duration. Until they contribute to that search, the anti-religionists will, I suspect, enjoy little success.