Came across this in the NYT Sunday morning (about how some atheists celebrate Christmas). It was a reminder that religious things are no more or less a delusion than most social events and that Christmas really doesn't have much to do with religion anyway. In the NYT article they quote Richard Dawkins whose current book is on my "to read" list in the next few weeks. The idea that atheists don't need to hate all religious ritual was was quite a shock to me when Julia Sweeney first presented it in a one-woman play about leaving behind her Catholicism for atheism. My few attempts to attend Mormon church since I left were very annoying and frustrating. I found it odd that Julia could attend mass and find comfort there, just as I still find it a bit odd that atheists (like myself) can enjoy Christmas.
It is encouraging to see atheists calmly point out that we have full, rich lives. As a Mormon I was taught to view atheists as having empty lives, walking voids with no hope for the future. When my own mother found out that I was an atheist she suggested that my only rational course was to kill myself. That idea a common view of atheism presented by religious leaders as a fear cudgel to keep little Christians in line. The whole idea of life being empty and pointless without God reminds me of a lecture I attended in 1993 by James H. Charlesworth (some of his books) where I was first introduced to the word "eschatology." It's from a Greek word (eskhatos) that means "the last" or "the end" and is the idea that there is a timeline for the world, set by God, and that all things are proceeding towards a final point (usually a judgement of some sort) that will sort out the mess. It's a very comforting idea--that all our suffering, all our missed opportunities, all our lives, will one day have a hearing before God and will be pronounced "good."
See, the Christians evolved in a world that wasn't so big on this "final judgement" with its attendant "countdown" thing. There were calendars and records of who was ruler when (the year when "so-and-so" was consul) or ancestral stories ("here is the bust of C. Julius Caesar, your ancestor who conquered Gaul) but no sense that they were counting down to something. The Romans didn't use the "BC" and "AD" system like we do. It was all forward from a great event (A.U.C.--ab urbe condita, the founding of Rome). Enter the Christians with their "Jesus is coming back soon and he'll send all you pagans to hell" and everything changes. It resonates with the human mind to try to find relevance in the big, scary world. The Roman empire was vast, even by today's standards, and individuals (as today) felt very powerless and useless. Along comes a religion that says "God cares about you as an individual, don't you want to give up that individuality so that when he comes back he can punish all the people who say you don't matter?"
Boom--we have a religious phenomenon.
So as I live my meaningless, atheist life, faced with annoying Christmas music, a herd of mindless consumers doing the bidding of the Coke spokesman (they call him Santa Clause, but we have Coke to thank for his current form) I smile, buy gifts for friends because I like an excuse to do something nice for them, and try to explain to my Christian friends that life is its own meaning. They don't believe me, but that doesn't really matter either.
