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Is Life a Tale Told by an Idiot? Probably.
My favorite political commentator, Dennis Prager, recently argued (Explaining the Left) that the hard political Left in the US and most intellectuals in Europe have abandoned traditional religions. To replace what they’ve abandoned, they’ve adopted a false religion of left wing political activism. Prager’s thesis makes a lot of sense to me.
Unhappily, Prager’s unflattering portrait of the Left’s lack of religious affiliations also describes me. That is, what he says of the Left—they have no God, believe most of the Bible is myth, and that death brings oblivion—is what I believe.
I’m uncomfortable, as you might imagine, being an ally of the Left. I want to be with you who believe. But I can’t. If there is such a thing as a religious bone, I lack it. My mom and dad also lacked that bone.
According to Prager, my life should be bereft of meaning. I have no religion and I don’t even have the Left’s politics to fall back on. (I’m even tepid in my right wing politics.) Yet I find life full of meaning. How can this be?
This way: When I was younger, I found significant meaning in teaching, writing, and helping to raise my kids. Now retired, I even find meaning in the commonplaces of daily life: sweeping the porch, doing my crosswords, feeding Ebbie the cat, walking in the evening with Bob the dog. These things are enough for me.
But even if I didn’t find meaning in the pedestrian, the meaning that my wife Marie 💕 lends to my life would be enough.
All well and good. It’s not hard to find meaning in life. Almost everyone does. It’s so easy, we hardly give it a second thought. Those whose find their lives empty sometimes check out of life early. I don’t blame them. If I felt my life was meaningless, I would probably check out early too.
Oddly, though I don’t agree with my favorite philosopher Dennis Prager in this matter, I happen to agree with my least favorite philosopher, the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre: “Life has no meaning a priori,” Sartre says, “It is up to you to give it meaning.”
Would my life have more meaning if I had a religion? Perhaps. On a trip to Japan a few years back, Marie and I came across a shrine featuring rows and rows of little dolls, probably a thousand of them. Each doll, I was told, represented a dead child. Buddhist mothers and fathers visit these shrines every so often, where they change the little clothes of the dolls that represent their children. I have no doubt that the parents find that modest religious rite not only gives comfort to their lives, but also gives meaning to the loss of their child. We like to think that death makes sense.
There is something else in Prager’s thesis that I also disagree with. This is the idea that society would splinter and degrade without the support of religion. In that, he agrees with the Russian Christian, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Ivan, Doestoevsky’s atheist antagonist in The Brothers Karamazov claims that if there is no God, there are no rules to live by and no moral law to follow—and everything is permitted. Dostoevsky suggests that if Ivan’s philosophy ever became a society’s prevailing philosophy, things would fall apart and “mere anarchy,” in Yeats’ famous phrase, “[would be] loosed upon the world.”
Dostoevsky and Prager needn’t have worried. There are a host of forces outside religion to keep our passions in check and go to support a lawful society. For one thing, those who don’t fear God do fear going to jail. That is a powerful deterrent.
Other non-Christian forces keep us striving for the good. Plato, Aristotle, Zeno and a host of other pagan philosophers may be dead, but their ideas continue to form a part of the culture that we swim in.
And of course, atheists, pagans, and believers alike learn from Jesus, the greatest teacher of them all. The moral law that is taught every Sunday permeates our society and therefore becomes a part of the moral universe, even for non-believers.
For that reason, I’m a enthusiastic supporter of religion, especially the Judeo-Christian variety. There is no doubt in my mind that religion not only improves our moral life, but it also increases social stability and helps to ameliorate our base instincts.
Would I be more moral if I were a believer? Probably not. It’s true, as you probably suspect, that I don’t feel the weight of sin, and I have only a small conscience. But I and other non-believers live in a world of moral imperatives that was created by Jews, Christians, pagan philosophers, atheists, teachers, Boy Scout leaders, and others. All of those influences encourage me to refrain from lying, to contribute to charities, to be nice to people, and so on.
One of those moral imperatives encourages me to be nice to animals. My cat Ebbie is wracked with arthritis in these her latter days. So a few months back I built a little bench for Ebbie so that she could step up more easily into her litter box. (As you might expect, I’m fond of that passage in the Bible where the Deuteronomist commands Jewish farmers to unmuzzle the mouths of their oxen as the animals work. Unmuzzled, the oxen can then eat as they help thresh the farmers’ grain.)
I’m not the greatest moral exemplar of our species. I’m probably somewhere between St. Francis of Assisi on one side, Hitler on the other. My Christian wife is more moral than I am, more generous, and more forgiving—though I’ve always thought that her moral superiority is the result of her sex and her nature rather than her religion.
I even pray occasionally, though I’m almost certain that my prayers waft up and disappear into the ether, unheard and unacknowledged. Prayer is a form of meditation for me. I send my prayers upward. That’s enough for me.
So how do you and I differ in the way we lead our lives? Are you nicer to your spouse, steal less often than I do? Riot and burn cars fewer times than I do? Give to beggars more than I do? I bet you don’t treat your dog and cat as well as I do.
How would my life be different if I were a believer?
Most people on this site are probably religious. Religion and the Right (the two R’s) just seem to go together. I’d like to hear from you. Would your life be less rich without religion? Could you be moral without religion to support your behavior? Or would your life remain much the same?
Are there any others out there in Ricochet land like me? Chime in. I don’t like to feel alone.
Published in General
You aren’t alone, I’m in the same boat.
Really! Mr. Poindexter, I don’t remember a post by you. Do you post often? What about?
I’m probably in the same boat, lack the bone, but there is obviously a thing called evil and right and wrong and truth and lies and you acknowledge it. We just don’t know why or where it comes from. JP II didn’t see this sky god thing modern atheists like to talk about, he saw god as man acting in history, Father Baron, presumably speaking for the Catholic Church says god is “being” I don’t understand these things, but then I don’t understand quantum physics either. So I look at the folks I consider evil and see what they say, who they hate, what they do and lordy lordy, it’s the Christians and the Jews and freedom they always hate the most. And I look at JP II and what he did, how he did it and how he got to where he could do it, and I can’t dismiss the notion of providence. I feel the same about our founders, all horribly flawed men in a flawed time, buy they accomplished things it’s hard to explain without providence. And listen and read Benedict as Ratzinger and understand that there is no doubt any of us have had that he hasn’t had. And then to the prudential Dr. Hayek and the Fatal Conceit and don’t see any difference between biblical revelation and the emergent order that created us here in the US as we are which we’re losing to folks who adhere to a different secular religion, which I think it’s fair to call evil.
I dunno, @kentforrester. When I read your posts, I think I’m hearing from a pretty good guy. I’ve known plenty of professing Believers who aren’t doing as well as you on the piety, morality, and Golden Rule scale. Faith is a journey. Maybe one day your foot will find the path. Or the path will find you. Either way, or not, you’re OK in my book. (As is the lovely Marie, who, it seems to me, knew a good thing when she saw one.)
Own-Horn-Toot: You might like my book(s), Kent.
Instead of thinking of religion as an outside-in phenomenon (“Here’s what you’re supposed to believe”) try imagining it as inside-out: “How shall we express what we know to be most true?”
Religion doesn’t create meaning, rather it is what human beings—lots of us, working hard over long, long periods of time—have come up with to express the meaning that exists in human life (at the very least).
Welcome to the club, Kent! I am not much different than you in religious feeling. I was raised by fervent born-again Christians and I am now married to a lovely practicing orthodox Jewish lady. Yet I am an agnostic. I have a cautious, yet warm relationship with the Jewish community (it is not permitted for a Jew to be married to a non-Jew, but the community has been very welcoming albeit with some practical restrictions.)
I think Prager is right about society falling apart without religion. The most obvious examples for me are the countries under communist rulers who were pretty much all devout atheists. The normal human decency in their societies broke down in every case and often deteriorated into genocide. I would like to think that you and I are exceptions to this rule. I have several conservative freinds who are agnostics also, though I don’t know any offhand that are pure atheists.
I once read a survey that showed strong religious believers and strong atheist believers were the happiest people. The ones in the middle like me are supposed to be the unhappiest! This is because human beings have great trouble handling uncertainty. It is much more comforting to know something than to be aware that you do not know something.
Then again, they say “ignorance is bliss!”
You should know that most of those dead babies, or mizuko kuyo, that are reverenced in Japan are dead by the parents’ own choice before you think how touching it is.
Many are dead from miscarriage or other tragedy, but most are aborted.
I don’t think their deaths “make sense.”
I am not very religious, but I am glad to be surrounded by people who are.
I’ve been a Prager follower for many years. So, let’s have a little clarity over agreement.
Prager gets his ideas about meaning in life from Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Have you read it?
From that, and personal life experience, I would say religion (especially Catholicism, which has a whole theology around it) helps give meaning to suffering, which, for some, is a huge component of life.
Prager never denies that atheists can make up their own meaning for life. It just doesn’t have any transcendent, cosmological staying power. You all are living on last year’s cultural sap of Christendom, but the tree is dead (a metaphor I’m borrowing from Fr. Sirico of the Acton Institute).
Nailed it!
Faith is also a decision (and a grace for which you can pray). You have decided there’s no cosmological truth to trust in outside your own material existence. Believers don’t have more “knowledge” (it’s a common misconception that we have no doubts), we have more trust in something (Someone) other than ourselves.
My goodness, Kate, you’ve written a lot of books, fiction and non-fiction. You are one busy GrannyDude. The autobiographical “Here If You Need Me” sounds intriguing. You really faced a crisis in your life, didn’t you? You were left with four kids! Wow!
You’ve obviously given this religi0n matter much more thought than I have. I agree with the “inside-out” approach. In fact, I always look inward to see if the thing going on in the outside world makes sense. I’m not sure that’s what you mean. But that’s always been my approach. It’s probably most people’s.
Thanks for your response.
Are you sure. What percentage are abortions? I looked up the Japanese words you mentioned. Wikipedia says that the little dolls represent miscarriages, stillbirths, or abortions. I would imagine the percentage of abortions is small. That is, I can see mourning for things that were no fault of your own, miscarriages and stillbirths, but not so much for something done by your own volition. Perhaps women who were pressured or forced into the abortion might mourn.
I’ll have to look deeper into the matter.
At any rate, thanks for your information.
A religion isn’t necessarily ordered around spirits. A religion is a fundamental and comprehensive understanding of basic reality and how we should respond to that reality (morals).
All Prager is saying is that every person needs meaning to his or her life and a basic way of understanding the world. So anyone who does not get such things from a theology will find it in another philosophy or mode of behavior.
Christians distinguish between a universal purpose (“to know and love God”) and individual vocations. We liken people to members of a body. A human body involves countless cells, organized into parts and systems, working cooperatively but often independently to both common and individual benefit.
Devotion to one’s family and/or profession is indeed a source of meaning. But we are designed for layers of meaning.
The most common misunderstanding of faith in God from the outside is that it is fundamentally about a what, rather than a who. Judaism and Christianity are personal relationships with an epically grander form of Person. Thus, the gift of faith is less an understanding of theory or discovery of knowledge than a personal encounter.
I like to compare God’s presence in the world to the wind. You can’t actually see the wind. Rather, you know it is present by seeing the things it moves. Most of the time, the wind’s movements are so normal and mild that it is easy to ignore. But at certain moments even the slightest breeze is precious.
Afternoon Kent,
From about 13 until my mid 30’s I called myself an atheist, existentialist, an absurdist. I loved Sartre and all the post WWII writers. In my life as an atheist, I was certainly as moral as all those smug Christians (more moral than most) [my atheism did not come with the humility package], and in my practice of atheism, life had no meaning, of course neither did suffering, nor wisdom (which I possessed naturally), nor happiness, and none of the suffering or joys of my friends, my family, my children had meaning either. The future had no meaning. It was hard to explain suffering in a world where as Camus would note, it was my choice to continue living, and that was my “daily bread”, to continue or not, because it really made no difference, because none of the consequences of one choice or the other had any meaning. In fact why have children at all, to be exceptional pets for one’s entertainment. One wouldn’t have children so that they could have an absurd life, would they?
Frankl in a concentration camps tells his fellow inmates that, we all know those who are suffering here with us and yet they make our life worse, and we all know those who are suffering here with us who lighten our burden. In this Frankl who does believe in a God is saying that even suffering is a platform for what might be called grace and that to hold that belief one needs to believe that there is purpose to one’s life. This is not a self invented purpose.
Here’s a question about the meaning of life which I never asked myself before today, although I can see that I’ve come to it by working on family genealogy and family history these last few years:
Which is more important, that my life is meaningful to me or that my life is meaningful to others?
Or another way: Which is more important, that I find meaning in my own life, or that I find meaning in the lives of others?
Reticulator, both are terribly important, of course, but you can only know one for certain: if your life has meaning to you or not. It would be wonderful if your life had meaning to others, but you can only foster that meaning; you can’t control it.
Me too, Marci.
Mr. Walton, here’s what you wrote: “So I look at the folks I consider evil and see what they say, who they hate, what they do and lordy lordy, it’s the Christians and the Jews and freedom they always hate the most.”
Sometimes Muslims hate one another more than they hate us. At least, they seem to enjoy killing one another when that “other” is the wrong Muslim sect. The Shiites will bomb the Sunnis and vice versa.
As for evil, I don’t think we have to go any farther than to believe it merely comes from a heart grounded in resentment, hate, jealousy, greed, and other human emotions. I don’t think we have to attribute “evil” to some kind of supernatural agency.
She, you’re as sweet as cop’s strawberry-frosted donut.
I’m 80 years old now. I don’t think a revelation is in store for me. My heart is now mostly petrified.
Chauvinist, I think you’re largely right about Prager’s ideas about meaning. I’m just a bit annoyed, I think, that Prager thinks that transcendent meaning (which, as you know, I don’t believe in) is worthwhile having, while non-transcendent kinds are far less important. I find the non-transcendent kinds of meaning perfectly satisfying.
Thanks for your obviously well-informed comments. No, I haven’t read Frankl’s book. It receives so much attention on Ricochet that I ought to, though I probably won’t. At this time of my life, I purposely avoid reading philosophy or Holocaust memoirs. I’m tired of metaphysics, and I don’t like my serenity disturbed in my latter days with scenes of human suffering. I also turn away from scenes where animals are being harmed. I now know that humans can do terrible thing to one another and to our fellow creatures.
I do not believe that for a minute. First, I don’t think that’s a natural human state, at any time of life. Second, comments you’ve made, too numerous to mention, don’t bear that out. Third, I don’t think Marie would have. it. So there.
Understood. The first half is painful to read, but his stories of treating people in the second half are inspiring. I recommended it to a friend who shares my love of philosophizing, and who has multiple cancers which will probably kill him soon. He’s a physicist and an agnostic, but with an unquenchable curiosity and remarkable openness. He couldn’t handle it.
I was hoping to help him with the question, “what do you do with your suffering?” But, when I put it to him that way, he denied that he is suffering. God bless him, he’s just not in a state of mind to deal with it.
I’ve never thought I could control either one. Not that I don’t like to have control of things.
Kent – You seem like a well-educated, content family man, happy with your life, so why ask the question? Are you looking for a pat on the back to say you are not alone? You’ll get plenty of that. Yet you highlight the positive affects that “religion” has had on society – namely the U.S. You raise many great questions. Start by talking to your wife. Why is she a Christian? Read Mere Christianity by former atheist C.S. Lewis. It can’t be answered in a comment on a blog – everyone’s experience is different. But imagine life with no Christians or Jews – the dream world of some…. Going back to the beginning – no Bible – just fast forward – here you are. How did the Founders create the new world and its laws? Look at history. Your life is a journey – and you seem content with what is – or maybe not?
-You might not be a believer, but you better prefer to live among those who follow the Judeo-Christian religion. As we have become more secular, we have seen a growth of the selfish, morally corrupt populace. It should be no surprise, and isn’t to those who study the Bible. After all, the Old Testament has 5000 years of lessons learned. Create a vacuum and something will fill it.
-You might be able to follow a moral path without religion and find meaning in life, but since kids are now actors in The Lord of the Flies, suicide is a big issue, and many need to drown their lives in drugs, it would seem that most can’t.
-Atheists usually are poor ambassadors of their non-faith. I am not including you in that comment. Many feel the need to go beyond not believing to mocking God and those who do believe. I toy with them some on Twitter then make some comment about not wanting to be like those with no souls. The atheist who is mocking me then tells me how dare I imply an atheist has no soul. I ask them what is the point of an atheist having a soul. hmmm. They hadn’t considered that before. Never had a good response.
Well, and Here If You Need Me has got lots of stories about adventures with game wardens, too. Well, they all do, with the possible exception of Beginner’s Grace, which is a little more didactic. But I’m told that non-religious persons find it helpful, if only in understanding the religious in their lives.
I also avoid Holocaust memoirs—too excruciating—but I found Victor Frankls both tolerable and actually inspiring. And it’s short. I, too, recommend him. (It’s in audio-book form, if you drive a lot—as I do.)
I’m with you @kentforrester (and @marci). You described my state of mind almost to a “T.”
As for Prager, who I also adore for the most part (except when he gets “Flight 93”-ish), it’s fine for him to claim that a transcendent form of meaning is superior to all forms of secular meaning. All religious people do. I doubt that his form of meaning is actually transcendent, and therefore the difference is just in our individual interpretations of it. I guess that makes both me and Prager equally dismissive of each other. As long as neither one of us want to jail (or worse) the other over the difference, who cares?