Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (81 page)

These consolations help people to accept mortality without religious consolations. One bonus: When you do away with the idea of heaven, hell goes with it. No devils, no demons, no flames to worry about. Nonexistence means the end of all worry and pain. That, to me and many other atheists, is the real promise of absolute peace.

Saying goodbye . . . for real

Atheists who were never religious have always understood death as final. When we lose a loved one, we mourn a permanent loss. But those who once believed in an afterlife often describe a “second grieving.” After she gave up her Catholic belief, Julia Sweeney said she realized she had to go and basically kill off everyone she ever knew who died, because she hadn’t
really
thought of them as dead before.

As any grief expert will tell you, facing and experiencing grief is much healthier than denial. As long as the possibility of an afterlife has a toehold on someone’s mind and heart, there can be a bit of avoidance at work, an asterisk that keeps that person from really recognizing and mourning the loss. I’ve heard Julia’s refrain over and over from people who are no longer religious — that they had to go back and mourn those they’d lost all over again because they hadn’t really thought of them as gone.

If instead you accept your death and others’ deaths as final — just as naturally as most people accept the death of a beloved pet as final — you can do the hard but important work of really saying goodbye.

Embracing life’s limits

Recognizing that death is real can lend an urgency and preciousness to life itself. That’s the upside of death: it makes life much more meaningful, which is even more important than the honest goodbye.

The book and film
Tuck Everlasting,
a story of a family that drinks from a spring that gives eternal life, perfectly captured this idea. They are 87 years into their immortality at the time of the story — and they hate it. Removed from the cycle of life and death, they don’t change or grow older, and they feel as if life is passing them by. As one character puts it, death is not to be feared as much as the unlived life. You don’t have to live forever — you just have to live.” Perfect.

Life is made much more precious by the fact that it doesn’t last forever. Understanding this life as a lucky shot at consciousness has the power to make every moment incredibly precious. You should wake up every morning laughing with delight that you’re here at all, not crying because it won’t last forever.

Gaping in New Wonder at Reality

I am a piece of the universe that woke up.

Every atom in my body has been around since the beginning of time, and because matter can’t be destroyed, every bit will continue to be here until the end of the universe. And, to paraphrase the phenomenal (agnostic) writer Bill Bryson in
A Short History of Nearly Everything,
every atom in your body has almost certainly gone through stars and millions of other creatures on its way to becoming part of you. You’re kind of wonderful that way.

The astonishing history of your atoms is just one example of the wonder that the naturalistic view holds in store, a brand of wonder that traditional religious wonder can’t touch — at least not so far. The astronomer Carl Sagan once said a religion that focused not on ancient scriptures but on the magnificent universe revealed by science would inspire awe far beyond current religious wonder. Until then, the nonreligious will keep all of that natural wonder warm.

Considering whether an atheist can be spiritual

Poor spirituality. The word’s been so stretched and abused that it’s hard to know what somebody means when they use it. When a Christian friend asked me how my family and I achieve spirituality in our home without religion, I asked what she meant by spirituality.

“Well . . . spirituality,” she said. “You know — having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and accepting him into your life as Lord and Savior.”

Yes, doing that without religion would be a neat trick. If spirituality is to have any real human value, I prefer using a definition that doesn’t exclude 90 percent of the people who have ever lived.

Those who say they are “spiritual but not religious” get a lot of grief from all sides. That’s what happens when you try to find a place in the middle. But they’re really making a claim that I’m about to make — that traditional, organized religion can be a source of spirituality, but it certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on it. To understand why, let me define spirituality in a way that doesn’t depend on religion.

Spirituality at its best is about
being awake.
It’s the attempt to transcend the mundane, sleepwalking experience of life everyone falls into, to tap into the wonder of being a conscious and grateful thing in the midst of an astonishing world. It can happen in a religious context, but it doesn’t require it. Religion can sometimes enhance that awareness and awakeness, but just as often it can get in the way of being really aware and awake.

Some atheists have no interest in such things, but many do. For those who do, the following naturalistic practices can pull a person out of the everyday and put the brain in a different gear:

Meditation:
If meditation seems like the opposite of being awake, you’re missing the point. Meditation is about being awake to your own existence, being present in the moment, not being highly caffeinated. And meditation is a great way to get yourself focused in the present.

Flow state:
When you’re completely in the moment, so intensely focused on the activity at hand that you lose track of time, then suddenly look up at the clock and realize it is midnight — that’s the flow state. It’s one of the most deeply satisfying and meaningful states a person can enter. It’s secular spirituality.

Some people get engrossed in a hobby like painting or woodworking for their sense of flow. Some play music or sing or compose. Others can lose themselves in deep conversation or intense reading. Flow state can happen when playing sports, or even getting deep into a video game. (Yes, I just connected video gaming to spirituality, and I’m not the first. Search online for “video games spirituality” to see what I mean.) After you recognize that spirituality doesn’t have to be religious, and that flow is what you’re after, all sorts of possibilities open up for reaching that wonderful, optimal state of mind. Then you can say, “I’m flowy, not religious” — or even, “I’m not religious, just awake.”

Welcoming natural wonder

Many people feel that a worldview without God must be cold and devoid of wonder. But people who’ve left religion often say exactly the opposite. Not that religion keeps a person from marveling at a sunset or a newborn baby, of course. But these new naturalists often find that discovering about the natural processes behind such wonders gives a deeper and more profound appreciation of just how very wonderful they are — one much more astonishing than “God did it.”

For a small sample of natural wonder, consider the following:

You are star material that knows it exists.

The Earth is hurtling through space at 68,400 miles per hour.

The continents are moving under your feet at the rate fingernails grow.