My Hope is Us

My father is the one family member who has, in a very respectful manner, attempted to challenge my non belief with creationist arguments and biblical evidence for God. Those are arguments which I expected and don’t really spend time thinking about them, since I find them to be unconvincing.  I would never have abandoned my theism if those claims had appealed to me in the first place.  The only thing he has stated which has caught my attention is the notion that I have no hope without a belief in God and how am I ever to give hope to my children. I would like to speak briefly about this concept of hope my father and other believers hold and my lack of it, and contrast it with what I believe to be a nonbeliever’s sense of hope.

Hope is defined by the dictionary as, “a feeling of expectation or desire for a certain thing to happen; a feeling of trust”.  The religious version of hope is the belief that God will provide for a believer's needs or deliver on specific promises such as an afterlife or answered prayers if one is obedient to a certain set of rules or instruction provided by this same deity. I am not able to cling to this type of hope offered by a deity because the same all-loving and all-powerful God which, if exists, has allowed billions of living things to suffer (animals included) horrible lives and deaths in the past and present time. I can hear those believers I know exclaim to me, “But, George, remember that time when you stupidly put yourself in a very dangerous situation and were only saved by the grace of God. Don’t you see God has a plan for you?”  Of course there is no mention of the countless others who have put their trust and hope in this “benevolent” being yet suffer miserably or see their prayers go unanswered during times of great distress. How can I cling to any type of hope that this deity extends to me?

As a nonbeliever, what kind of hope can I cling to in this life? As a humanist, I will try to explain the reality of hope for those who reject the hope offered by a deity.

 

I hope to be a loving father, husband, son, and friend. I hope to find a career which I am truly happy and find fulfilling. I hope that my children will be successful in all that they do and find happiness and joy in their limited time here on this earth. I hope that murder, rape, and other atrocities will decrease in our society. This hope is not based on wishful thinking but based on my belief that I and my fellow humans have the capability to fulfill them with hard work, critical thinking, and collective effort.  All of humanity’s progress can be attributed to the pursuit of the hopes of individuals/communities fulfilled through great effort and creativity combined with critical thinking and reason.  One shining example of this progress and achievement of a hope is how science and those who practiced it were able to eradicate or significantly reduce many diseases which plagued humanity for centuries through the development of vaccines. There were many who hoped and prayed to God for centuries to rid themselves, their loved ones, or society of these diseases to no avail. This hope for the decrease or eradication of specific illnesses became a reality only when individuals through hard work, cooperation, human intelligence, and the application of science were able to create a solution.

Human effort, both individual and collectively, rationality, and creativity is the only way to fulfill our hopes, not wishful thinking and belief in deliverance by a god.  

That is why I chose Humanism as my life’s central belief system because only with confidence in us as individuals and a collective can we actualize the most critical, exciting, and revolutionary ideas that we hope to see fulfilled for the benefit of me, my children, their children, the human species, and life on this planet. Humanism provides hope because only humanity can bring our hopes to life.

Setting Up False Idols

I have heard nonbelievers express disappointment or shock when a person in our community, especially those held in high regard, is found to have some very human flaws.  Why do we get so disappointed when they turn out to be flawed human beings?       

I was speaking with my freethinking friend, True, after we had attended the Blackout Secular Rally in NYC.  We were discussing the humanist/atheist community and she shared something she experienced in an online discussion about the Trayvon trial.  She shared that someone online professing to be a humanist stated that “thug deserved it” in reference to Trayvon.  She expressed disgust and disbelief that a statement like that could be uttered by a humanist.  My friend is pretty new to the freethought/humanist/atheist community and expressed her belief that she had entered a community which was completely superior to the religious faith-based community of her past. Unfortunately, I did not find it shocking as her.  I told her that I had the same expectations as her when I entered the atheist community, but I learned pretty fast that an individual coming to the conclusion that there is likely no god does not automatically make that individual a rational person in all areas of their life.  I have had enough interaction with nonbelievers to realize that they are plagued by the same issues of all other human communities/individuals and definitely don’t, in my opinion, come to conclusions that are evidence based or rational all the time.  The same way that there are believers who are extremely rational and logical in other areas of knowledge but don’t apply that same rational and logical mindset to their religious or divine belief. This should be a powerful reminder that NONE of us is completely rational and we must always examine our cherished beliefs and be ready to discard them if proven wrong.  After all we are all still human, just a very smart primate, and did not magically become Vulcans after our deconversions.  We still have to deal with emotions, shortage of information, and our limited life perspective.

As humanists, we should especially be aware of our human limitations.  There should be no reason to erect false idols, either in human form or in the form of dogmatic beliefs, as we have no need for gods.  

Is this a real problem in the atheist/humanist community?  If so, why do you think we set up these false idols?