I am human and I need to be loved. Just like everybody else does
by digby
Via Salon and Alternet, I see that the godless atheists are under attack again:
In a widely disseminated and discussed opinion piece, Anglican minister Rev. Gavin Dunbar made an interesting and even compelling argument that grief is necessary for love and humanity… and then went on to argue that, unless you believe in God, you have no reason to care whether the people you love live or die, or even to love them in the first place.
Again: I wish I was joking. I quote:
The new atheists proclaim their gospel with the fervour of believers: God is dead, man is free, free from the destructive illusions of religion and morality, of reason and virtue. But then a someone dies, suddenly and cruelly, like the young man known to many in ..[this] parish [in [Eastern Georgia] who was killed in a freakish accident last weekend. And his death casts a pall of grief over his family, his friends, their families, his school, and many others. Yet if he was no more than an arrangement of molecules, a selfish gene struggling to replicate itself, there can be no reason for grief, or for the love that grieves, since these are (we are told) essentially selfish survival mechanisms left over from some earlier stage in hominid evolution. Friendship is just another illusion. But of course we do grieve, even the atheists. And in so grieving, they grieve better than they know (or think they know).
The grieving atheist cannot provide any reason why he grieves, or why he (rightly) respects the grief of others.
Read the whole thing for an explanation of what the “new atheists” really do believe, which is quite interesting. But for me the answer to the question is fairly simple. Everyone grieves because they are going to miss having the person in their lives. It’s the loss to themselves that makes them so sad.
However, if one must take it to another, more philosophical or spiritual level, it seems to me that the atheist has far more cause to grieve than the believer. After all, the atheist believes that’s the end of the line, curtains, fade to black. The believer, on the other hand, should not just not grieve, he should be happy. They believe their loved one is in heaven, where everything is perfect.
I’ve actually often thought it was somewhat selfish of believers to grieve with such energy when according to their beliefs, the person they purport to love is in a better place. (In fact, one could even make the argument that there’s little point in life itself, when the big payoff lies beyond the grave. It’s the atheists who value life — it’s all they’ve got.)
Anyway, I’m being somewhat flippant and will probably regret it. Read the piece, it’s very serious about all this. But it’s true that the religious folks who believe that atheists don’t have any cause to grieve or care about love or life don’t know what they’re talking about. Atheists and believers may not agree on much when it comes to the existence of God or an afterlife, but they are all human. They should be able to at least agree on that much.
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