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Paul Howard's avatar

Hey, Jon,

I appreciate and I agree that Americans are a little low on hope right now. I disagree with a couple points.

First, while the universe may not have a purpose as simple and neat as one found in Christianity, that does not mean that existence outside an organized religion is completely unmoored, random, unfeeling, and meaningless. I'm reminded of the beginning of Steven Pinker's novel Enlightenment Now, in which he answers the question "Why should I live?":

"In the very act of asking that question, you are seeking reasons for your convictions, and so you are committed to reason as the means to discover and justify what is important to you. And there are so many reasons to live!

As a sentient being, you have the potential to flourish. You can refine your faculty of reason itself by learning and debating. You can seek explanations of the natural world through science, and insight into the human condition through the arts and humanities. You can make the most of your capacity for pleasure and satisfaction, which allowed your ancestors to thrive and thereby allowed you to exist. You can appreciate the beauty and richness of the natural and cultural world. As the heir to billions of years of life perpetuating itself, you can perpetuate life in turn. You have been endowed with a sense of sympathy–the ability to like, love, respect, help, and show kindness–and you can enjoy the gift of mutual benevolence with friends, family, and colleagues.

And because reason tells you that none of this is particular to you, you have the responsibility to provide to others what you expect for yourself. You can foster the welfare of other sentient beings by enhancing life, health, knowledge, freedom, abundance, safety, beauty, and peace. History shows that when we sympathize with others and apply our ingenuity to improving the human condition, we can make progress in doing so, and you can help to continue that progress."

Secondly, I would argue that some of the ideas within Christianity tend to inflate the importance of the individual. People think that God died individually for them and that they are in direct communication with the Creator of the universe. That's all fine and dandy if God is telling you to feed and shelter the less fortunate, but it gets dicey when God is telling you to kill the infidels, reclaim the Holy Land, or that polygamy is the way to go. Absent religious belief, one gets a sense of perspective on their place in the cosmos--relative insignificance. So, there's less concern about one's place in eternity and more concern about the positive change that can be made now or for future generations and society as a whole.

Finally, I really cannot stomach the idea of all these individual heavens. I remember someone saying at my grandmother's funeral that they had a vision of her happily riding around on a horse in heaven. I just thought that was ridiculous. I understand why it's appealing to think of heaven as whatever makes one feel better about all the suffering that happens during life and all the uncertainty of death. I do not find the idea of heaven as everything we enjoyed in life minus everything we found unpleasant appealing. The playground is fun because sitting still in class is sometimes boring. Karaoke is fun because we don't all have the voices of angels (also, we're usually drunk). Rollercoasters are fun because waiting is hard and feeling the thrill of adrenaline when the ride first plunges is exhilarating. Clean water is fun because it's a valuable limited resource. If everything is frosting, frosting loses its sweetness. And let's not forget that the Christian heaven is going to have a population far smaller than the Christian hell--where everyone will have all the things they hated about life minus all the things they found pleasant.

Nothing about heaven or hell gives me hope. I find hope in working to make a better future for my family and the next generation inheriting the Earth. That fills me with a deep sense of empathy and purpose.

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