My epiphany

I haven't had a religious epiphany from losing my son. When my grandmother said he was in the arms of Jesus, I said 'he's at peace', and that was it.

Weeks since then, I realized part of deconstructing me (see last blog about imperfection) was trying to remember again what it felt to really be joyous. What things really bring me joy, and which don't. I found joy in nothing for many months; not eating, not sleeping, not even Simones shenanigans.

But it all finally came down to the question: what do I want from this world in the short term? If you could live your last day, and you knew it, what would you do?
Well, what I realized is that I've come to a more naturalistic worldview. Not Wiccan (sp?) but just the cruelty and beauty of what life is. Every day should be a good day to die, and I put that quote on my profile only days before Myles died. I took it off, felt like an asshole, but I still believe it even though I can't accept the fact that he should have at least died in my arms if I was going to have to say goodbye forever.

So the other day, I layed in the sun, just plopped down on my front deck and soaked in the rays, and I was happy. And I've been thinking about planting a garden, I've been moving perennials, putting some rocks up, and I'm just learning, but its challenging and fascinating and the suns rays feel like Myles. I like to think his energy is apart of them.

So I guess what I find faith in is the cycle of life. People call people tree huggers, but have any of you hugged a tree? I have. It was terrific. And I'm going to plant a tree that I have for Myles, and I'm going to plant whatever I can for him in the next few weeks. Because he was here and just as quick he was gone, and he was just as much a part of the cycle of life that I am or you are. I told my daughter a loooong time ago that everything that lives must die. I remind her of it if she asks. But not in a dreary way, more like an adventure. I tell her if everyone lived forever, life wouldn't be so special. It would have neither beauty nor cruelty, and that in the grand scheme, we are pretty lucky to find ourselves here, in a finite world. And I think Myles was even fortunate, to live, even such a short life, with love, and laughter, and singing, and talk always revolving around him. He kicked my sister in the head, and punched or kicked at least every other person dear to me.

Maybe living and dying in the womb is so not so bad after all. No hunger, I like to think no pain, just a warm embrace and a slow awareness of the voices and sounds around you. And he was a part of our family, he heard not just our laughter, but our arguments, Simone's tantrums, and my stress. All the while he was warm and nurtured, and growing and learning, and he will never know the sadness we feel that he is gone. I'm glad for that. All he knew was contentment and wonder, and maybe that's not so bad?

He felt love, but never grief. Maybe it's selfish to wish him with me instead, maybe he had felt the best life had to offer, hopefully not the worst.

Visiting 'Myles'

As an atheist, I've begun to wonder why I go to my son's memorial. I've been a little short with my husband regarding the way he talks about Myles in front of DD. We are not, in fact, visiting Myles. We are visiting his memorial. It is a ritual, one of remembrance, one of bonding and sharing our loss. A ritual for us, not for him. I don't see it as more than that. and I don't want my daughter to think it is more. I don't want her to think we are visiting 'him', because I think she could get confused by the fact that his body is there but that he is not his body. I don't want her to think, for example, that he is cold, or lonely, or experiencing things there where he is buried. So I think language makes a big difference but DH isn't as delicate as me.

My husband is a deist, and I wish I could say our views haven't clashed over the years a little. In general, I'm disappointed completely with how Myles' death has been discussed with our daughter by most of my family. I was gone for five hours after he had died. When DD was around our family and they all had Myles' body and were telling her all sorts of things. I'm just worried she is confused. I've always told my family, by all means, share your beliefs with my daughter. But please, preface it with, "I believe . . . ". Don't treat your beliefs as fact. I don't think she should be under the impression that this is factual, that everyone agrees. Because we, as a world, considering all of our religions, don't agree. So I want her to hear the beliefs of many people, but I want her to first and foremost realize that belief is subjective.

So, it does kind of suck that I didn't get to help guide those discussions at the time. Because now she has all these set things in her mind, things that aren't 'weird' (that Myles is an angel, that he's in heaven) but that I wish she didn't believe on a physical level. She was looking at this beautiful sunset the other day, and she said that was heaven but noted she didn't see anyone there. Very astute. I don't tell her either way, mostly when we talk about these things, I ask her more questions than I tell her what to think.

I've always thought that if religion brings my daughter peace, I'm glad for her. It has never brought me peace. The idea of my son being somehow conscious and in some alternate reality is actually disturbing to me. I guess I could talk about it further, but I don't want to make moms like me, who do believe this, upset or offended by my misgivings. As I said, whatever brings you peace and happiness is what you should do. I find peace in knowing my son is at peace, and that he never learned the cruelties of this world, only the warmth and love of my womb. And I guess that's all I have to say about that right now.

From atheism to what? Why do we hope?

I've posted about my previously unequivocal atheism, discussed my hope, read some Nietzche and Camus and I'm more confused than ever. What am I hoping for? Do animals hope? Is hope the same as anticipation? Like does a squirrel watch your food 'anticipating' or 'hoping' that you may drop it? When my dogs gather around my daughter when she eats, LOL, is it out of 'hope' or 'want', and what is the difference? I think I can safely say that 'want' and 'anticipation' are necessary for there to be hope, but they are certainly not sufficient.Is hope simply to sit back and yearn for something? Is hope a thought, or an action or both? I think, unlike 'want', that hope requires action, sacrifice. You have to play to win, in other words. As a PhD student, I'm obviously willing and able to withstand temporary short term discomfort (if you consider grad school short term and if 'discomfort' means a self inflicted torture) for a long term gain. So is hope just a simple account of economics? But not just economics, short term loss for long term gain? It's certainly not cause and effect, the long term gain is not certain. Not everyone who enters a PhD program will leave with their degree. We know that our actions to attain what we hope for merely increase the probability that we gain whatever it is. Is hope simply a gamble?

Do we only differentiate hope from want by the odds against us? When I buy a lottery ticket, there is a part of me that hopes I win, but I recognize it as a 'fools hope' because I know the odds. But as they say, if you don't play, you can't win. So hope requires you 'play'. It is an action, and it is a sacrifice, financial or other.

So far, I think I can say that hope requires want/desire, anticipation, action, sacrifice AND that the outcome is essentialliy probabilistic. But is that alone hope? I think we've found necessary components, but not yet sufficient components to describe hope.

Through the lens of pregnancy, all of this applies. Pregnancy is many instances of hope. But there is something more than just probablistic economics to it. First, with gambling, there are known odds, we know the likelihood of flipping heads 10 times in a row or getting a royal flush, they are easily calculable. We know that sometimes we'll win, and sometimes we'll lose, but we know in the aggregate exactly what proportion will win or lose with the same hand. Hope, in this scenario, is that one wins monetarily more than they invest. The difference between gambling and pregnancy, though is that the odds aren't as clear.

Basically, fertility, family planning, it is a gamble. As you ttc each month, you're playing to win, and the majority of couples are fertile, but that doesn't necessarily mean the month they 'try' they will get pregnant. We all know that part of it is up to chance. So many of us want to get pregnant, while some of us hope to get pregnant, depending on those odds. I've always 'wanted' to get pregnant by the way, I don't know if I ever hoped, mostly because I've never had infertility issues.
Once you have conceived, does it become a hope? Once again, I think it depends on the odds against you, are you 'high risk' etc. I think perhaps for everyone it becomes a hope because we don't know a lot about pregnancy and miscarriage. Many pregnancies end in miscarriage, the majority of those losses occur before 12 weeks. And then we make it to 23 or 24 weeks and we know that probability speaking, if we do have preterm labor, that our baby would have pretty favorable odds at survival. And as we near the end of pregnancy, as we make it to term, we've pretty much made it, but most of us know that there are no guarantees until our babies are safe in our arms. But still, as our odds of giving birth to a live healthy child increase to over 99% as we reach term, it's still essentially a hope. Why? Is it the unknown? Because when it's a card game and you're 99% likely to win, I don't think you 'hope' to win anymore. You expect it.

So perhaps, then, why I feel so betrayed and hopeless is because I was no longer hoping. I felt entitled, it was almost a certainty. And I did forget, especially that 37th week, that this was still a gamble that hadn't yet paid off. And now, perhaps I feel hopeless because I realize that essentially everything is a gamble. And to hope is to believe that you will win, even if the odds are against you.

So, back to the conundrum, can true atheists justify their hope at all?

"Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man." -- Nietzsche
to be continued . . .

Finally, my atheism

On my private myspace blog, I discussed my atheism a long time ago. I've thought about retrieving those blogs and posting them all here. In general, I wish I knew how to take my myspace blog and transfer it to blogspot, but in chronological order. I don't want my old post to appear as new posts etc., so any ideas on that would be great.

So here is my first post from August 2006:

Okay, so I'm doing this more for me than for all of you, but I was asked the other day if I just woke up one day and was an atheist. The answer is 'no'. It is something that spanned many years, and I'm sure that many atheists have gone through similar awakenings. So depending on where you fall as far as religion vs. atheism goes, my next few blogs are going to be about my enlightenment, or my descension into hell :)

Part2: How I was raised

I think my upbringing was very average when it comes to religion. My parents were not zealots, they were default christians (that is, 'everyone is a christian so I guess I am too') and they accepted the basic tenets of the christrian religion without any thought at all. In my earliest years, we didn't go to church 'regularly'. We went to an evangelical free church down the street sometimes (I remember going their once) but for some reason my parents didn't like it. Of course, now that I know what evangelicalism is, I know why, but I didn't know at the time :) I had a good friend that I met when I was about 5, and by the time I was seven our families were pretty good friends. At that time, we were invited to the First Baptist Church and we all seemed to like it.

I can only speak for me, but I remember really embracing religion, starting when I was probably around 8 years old. I wanted to be baptized, I wanted my whole family to be baptized, and I remember really arguing for it and being excited about it. I remember getting a bible and taking my first communion after that, and I remember enjoying Sunday school, and bible school in the summers, and especially Wednesday night kids groups. I loved my church, I had lots of friends there and our youth director was a really special person in my life for a number of years starting at that young age.

So, the community part was obviously a large part of it, but it wasn't the only part I was sold on. As far as spirituality, I was also a complete believer. Looking back on it, and knowing what I know now about how I enjoy reading and studying and philosophy, I really think church and the bible filled that void for me at the time. Reading a really old text and trying to understand what it meant was something I liked doing, and this may seem odd to other atheists, but there is a logic behind religion. A logic I now know as faith. I guess what I mean is that there was a system to how you should think about religion and the world, there was a right and wrong, and most importatnly, there was a formula. The formula had nothing to do with evidence or rationality, but it was a formula nonetheless, and I think people deep down really like formulas. Really, thats all church is, its one big classroom, where the priest/preacher/clergyman/pastor use the formula of faith to take scripture and turn it into a message of fear, hope, and salvation. Not very different than the examples I do when teaching my statistics class.

So as I went from being a tween to my early teens, I was very active in my church, I sang in the choir, teen choir, did youth groups, went to bible school, bible camp, and church. I prayed (even around my school flag pole) I sang songs, and I thought I felt the presence of God on many many occassions. Of course, I also believed in astronomy, ghosts, tarot, and ouiji boards. Not coincidentally, I remember being afraid, afraid of the unknown, of death and dying, of heaven and hell. I remember crying and worrying, 'was my Grandpa in heaven even though he wasn't a believer before he died?' 'what if you do something awful and die before asking for forgiveness?' and things along that line. So religion did not bring me the peace many think it should. In fact the peace I have now as an atheist is not like any I've ever experienced, but I will get to that later I suppose.

Thus, I was not born an atheist, I was very much a christian at one point in my life, so much so that I took a discipleship course and was even interested in witnessing and spreading the good word as an adolescent.

Part 2: What the hell happened?

After reading through my last entry, I guess what isn't amazing is that I was a firm believer as a child, and I think children are the most faithful and magical people on earth. I wanted to believe in everything as a child. Invisibility, witches, wizards, magical spells, flying, hypnotism, astrology, ghosts, unicorns, angels, and of course, Santa Claus. And from my perspective now, god fits right in there with the rest of it all. I firmly believe god is Santa Claus for adults, and I believe that I came to my realizations about god and the church much like a child finds out about Santa Claus.

For example, there were just the plain old bald faced inconsistencies, kind of like your presents from your parents and your presents from santa claus being wrapped in the same paper. Finding out that god didn't write the bible, that a bunch of fallible men wrote it, and then others decided what should and shouldn't be included, and that they added things and censored things. And just like presents wrapped in the same paper, or catching your parents eating Santas cookies, these revelations happened periodically.

When I was 13 or 14, in a very laid back conversation, I asked my much revered youth pastor what he would do if somebody who was gay wanted to join our congregation. I didnt know the answer because unlike some religions, I dont ever remember anyone vocally condemning homosexuality in my church. Im sure you can all guess his answer, but at the time I was shocked. Here was one of the most principled, funny, sweet, wise people Id ever known (he was on a pedestal) and his answer was unequivocal. Add that little nugget to the occasional verse subjugating women in the bible, and it was an unsettling journey.

Of course, you have to remember, like the majority of christians, I was part of a mainstream church, so a lot of the more radical (and disturbing) doctrine were swept under the rug. There were no sermons on the role of women or on how homosexuality was a sin. This isnt to say people didnt believe these things, but it wasnt my churches selling point. And just like with Santa Claus, I wanted to believe so bad that I would just take evidence to the contrary and set it aside, or forget about it.

But I think the most important thing for me, and very much related to these small revelations, were the kinks in their formula of morality. I've always been a very righteous person, many times self-righteous, but always quickly assessing the rightness and wrongness and proclaiming injustice from the mountain tops if I saw it. I have my mom to thank for this. And deep down in my gut, many things in the Christian religion weren't adding up. As I mentioned in my last post, I cried and really worried about the fate of my grandfather's soul (a grandfather I never met) because he wasn't saved. And when I expressed this concern to my spiritual elders, the responses I got were different. I think a christians answer to this question is the test of their extremism. I would have some allude to the idea that we couldn't know, but maybe he was saved, and if he was a good person then I shouldn't worry etc. etc., oh yeah, and that I should pray about it.

On the other hand, at one particular Sunday school (I was probably 11 but maybe 12) at my grandparents church (not my regular church) the person leading our group discussed a young girl who in only the last few months before her death in a car accident, had done a lot of bad things (ran away, did drugs), and how her parents were so torn over her spiritual fate. And the teacher actually told us she probably wasn't in heaven. Of course, she did it more suavely than saying the girl was damned to hell, but I'm sure no one in that class questioned the theme of that message: You don't know when you're going to die, one slip up and you're damned to hell. I don't know the veracity of this story (it sounds made up now that I think about it), but if it isn't true, that's almost more fucked up than if it is true. Because if it isn't true, then she just made it up to scare all of us, if you know what I mean, her version of the religious bogeyman for preteens. And I guess, with perspective I have now, I feel like fear is the basis of religion; not hope.

So, I do believe that this scare factor is the biggest part of religion. They tap into that fear, a fear nobody wants to talk about, and they fear-monger very delicately, very subtley, in most sermons I've heard. I now know many extremists aren't so subtle, but I can not point out enough that most of this was very subtle in my very mainstream church.

There is one line in Santa Claus is Coming to Town, that I believe really gets at the moral core of religion, 'you better be good for goodness sake'. So, the whole song is about how SC knows all, and that you will be rewarded for good behavior and punished for bad, but don't think that means the reward is the reason for being good. No, they actually have to state that being good is intrinsically valuable. Now, why would anyone have to state such an obvious thing; that being good is good in its own right? Is it maybe because the entire song is all about earning rewards, and doing what you're told because if you don't you'll be punished? The intrinsic value of doing good is a side note, a small disclaimer. Everything else in the song says be good for authoritys sake, be good for your own sake. Be good because unlike your parents, SC is always watching. So when it says, be good for goodness sake, it is conceding that the entire rest of message has absolutely nothing to do with the virtues of being good.

Religion is exactly the same. Morally, it is hollow. People don't do good for goodness sake. They do good for their own sake, they do good because god is watching, they do good so you can pat yourself on the back, they do good because they are afraid of what they don't understand (death). And Im even making the grand assumption that all Christians do at least some good in the name of their faith, which isnt true. Many dont do good at all, but they use the idea of gods rewards for good and bad as justification for the worlds inequalities. Whether they did good or not, their fortunes are earned rewards (blessings), and misfortunes are punishments. If you're a millionaire, then you MUST have been good, right?

And the hollowness of the moral foundation of religion is seen in just about everything, and its hollowness is evident in the vast array of differences between different religious groups and what they believe to be right and wrong (from eating pork to blood transfusions). I guess it is a lot easier for people to base their life on dogma than it is to really think about ethics and morality. And I guess that is what is so ironic about religious people believing that atheists are amoral or immoral. For even the most religious person must see the hypocrisy of their system of morality. They have to know that when you get down to the foundations of it all, that it doesnt make logical sense. And the more you read the bible literally, the more you believe in biblical inerrancy, the more absurd the logic becomes.

So what happened? A lot of little things. Its not like somebody came up and told me one day, and that was it. It was a process where a small piece of the lie was revealed over a period of time until the entire thing was as absurd as it obviously shouldve been from the beginning. I had a comment on my last section regarding being born an atheist and I have thought about it a lot. I have to disagree, children are born into a world of faith, all of your knowledge is based on faith, faith in your god-like parents. I dont think anyone is born an atheist, I think we are all born innately to be believers and we believe whatever we are told.

From the view of the faithful, the story of what happened to my faith is, as I joked, my descencion into 'sin'. I started doing drugs, hanging out with the wrong crowd, etc., etc.,. This is true, I was questioning all authority at the time, but during my teen years, when I did the stupidest things in my life, I would never have called myself an atheist. I was still a believer, perhaps a wayward believer, but I had been much too frightened as a teenager to say or believe god didnt exist. And let me tell you, being a wayward believer is probably one of the worst feelings in the world, because you still believe some of the dogma, and at that age, I had no idea how to assess anything on real philosophical, moral level. Well, let me take that back, I did, I did a lot of philosophy before I knew what it was, but I hadnt started to really really question the basis of morality in this world. And I was still sad and frightened, but most of all I was confused. I didnt call myself an atheist until right around 2004. Before that I was an non-Christian agnostic (I didnt know what I was, but I knew for sure I wasnt a Christian), and before that, I wouldve been a deist, and before that probably a Christian.

Part 3: Peace through atheism

So, I mentioned that I never felt more at peace with the world and my place in it since becoming an atheist. So, I'm going to describe what that means for me.

Since I've become an atheist, I'm not scared anymore. I'm not scared of trivial things, and I 'm not scared of big things. I'm not scared of ghosts, or walking through my house at night, I'm not scared of anything supernatural. I'm scared of people and pain (okay, I'm also scared of spiders although completely and admittedly irrational). Once more, I don't ponder death, or more to the point, what happens after. I just don't, I can't explain it. I don't dwell on it, I don't wonder or worry at all, unlike before. I'm at peace with the human condition. And I guess, honestly, even if I thought that there was a 1 in a billion chance that there were in 'afterlife', I still wouldn't ponder it, because it would be futile. After saying that, let me ponder . . . LMAO

Let's assume there is an 'afterlife', first of all, if we could know what it was really like, how could we possibly understand it? 'Heaven' is characterized in the bible as this place full of earthly goods and mansions, and streets, and people (virgins for Islam), and this just seems completelely culturally constructed to me. Would heaven really entail these man made things? Would it mean that we would still be communicating in a society? And if so, what makes it so much different than this world? Don't people who believe in heaven or hell grasp that the only conceptions of heaven that have ever been came so clearly from the human brain?

For me, the peace that will come from dying is the kind of peace where I don't have to think, react, or feel. Many people, when they grow older, are just plain tired, it is said 'they are ready to die'. Hell, many people who take their own lives are just as tired, and I guess I can understand that. Being a finite creature is about the only thing we have going for us, because to be part of this human condition, good and bad, takes a lot of work. An afterlife that entailed anything remotely close to what this life entails (socially or mentally) would not be 'heaven' by definition.

I love my family, I love communicating with them, sharing my life with them, but what would there be to communicate in the afterlife? And if there is no communication, no physical body, no language or emotion, then does it matter if we are with our loved ones? Wouldn't every 'entity' be a loved one? And if there is communication, and language, and bodies, what would we do or discuss? Our life back on earth? Wouldn't our thoughts be covetous of that life lost? And if that were true, then would it be 'heaven'. There is no family without life. Social bonds, language, and experiences create friendship, and these are things that cannot be a part of any rational conception of 'heaven'.

And that brings me to the fear. I guess heaven was conceived because people are afraid of not thinking or not being. When I was a kid, I cried once thinking about these things, I remember it distinctly, I was probably 10 or 12, and it was a hard hit. I think to finally fully understand that we will no longer 'be' can be a traumatic realization. I remember thinking, 'I don't ever want to not exist', and the feeling of it was awful. But on top of trying to deny the finite nature of our 'selves', we are also afraid of losing the social bonds we have with our loved ones. I think that people are afraid that when one of their loved ones dies, that things weren't communicated that should've been, or that things didn't happen in a way they imagined or would have wanted, they're upset about the circumstances surrounding their death (if it was violent or unexpected), or just because of an unhappy circumstance that may surround the timing of their death. And the whole idea of heaven is that people will have that chance to communicate or to follow through with their promises, or will be able to show their worth or prove themselves in ways they weren't able to before the death happened. The conception of heaven is just a way to not close the door on those social interactions that were inevitably unfulfilled. And for a 'self' that was created from social communication and social bonds (socialization), this is equally as devastating as losing one's self.

What I think people are forgetting when they have these regrets is that what is happening in our world, from the worst attrocity to the most glorious acts are all quite beside the point. What I mean is that, each of our lives, in the grand scheme, does not matter that much. Our hopes and fears and the love and laughter we experience are important to us, they're all we have; but in the universe, they are inconsequential. Subjectively, they are EVERYTHING, they are our world. Objectively, they are as meaningless as a summer breeze. No matter the life, no matter how grand or humble, short or long, it is magnificent, and it is miniscule at the same time. To focus only on the social obligations that went unfulfilled in anyone's lifespan is to lose that perspective.

And the hope of heaven is also part of the yearning to know and understand this life in a way that is impossible for us, and it is a way to fulfill our curiosity so we can find peace in knowing the past and the future and so we can know that our unfinished dreams will be realized in the next generations. My question is, what is the difference between being all knowing and knowing absolutely NOTHING? The answer is, when you die, there is no difference. And that isn't a tragic thing, or something to regret. And I guess that is what will be wonderful about death, no more hoping or worrying, no more wondering or regretting, simply no more. And its that simple, and it is neither a good or bad thing for the person who died, it just is. Because even if they didn't want to die, or they were angry that their time here was done, that anger and want and regret will end in peace just like the love and laughter will end in peace.

Death is only bad for those of us still alive because we miss people, and there is nothing wrong with that. When I cry at funerals, I cry for the living. I cry for myself, I cry for the people who won't get to know who I knew, I cry for those who were closest to the person who died, I cry for the hole I know they will have in their lives. But I don't cry for the person who died, because they are at peace, and you don't have to believe in heaven or god to believe that.

So, I hope that there is not an afterlife, I really do, because it could never be better or worse than life itself. Peace is nothing, and nothing will not be good or bad or happy or sad, it will just be, and I find comfort in that. And that comfort is not reliant upon supernatural forces.

Where are the grieving atheists?

You wouldn't believe how pressured I feel to have some religious epiphany lately. My only recourse is making jokes. Right now, my schtick is that I now believe in God . . . and he is most definitely evil. No really, I have a hard time believing that religious conversions are so effective in times of tragedy. Am I that naive?

All I can think of is how ineffective religion would be in helping me deal with the loss of my child. If I were a religious person, I think I would be plaqued by the 'whys'. Or the whole, 'why do bad things happen to good people' BS. Currently, these aren't the types of things I'm dwelling on, and they weren't when it all happened. I almost feel bad for deeply religious people who find themselves in these situations. I became an atheist, not through tragedy, but through a long organic rational process. Tragedy, in my mind, is probably the worst way to become an atheist. Atheism isn't about anger, after all.

All I know about what happened to me is that I'm a statistic, a rare one. I'm not a bad person, I didn't deserve to lose my son, no one deserves this. And nobody, certainly no omnipotent entity, would 'do' this to someone. There is no justification, no long term 'lesson' to be learned, no big picture that could possibly satisfy or justify what has happened to me and my family. So any talk of such just makes me frustrated with the silliness of it. Do people really expect me to believe that a) god is loving, b) he nevertheless 'took' my son, c) it was a good thing that this happened in 'the big picture', d) that people are rewarded for doing gods work and punished for not, e) but because I'm a 'good' person I'm not one of those people being punished. Who can believe that all at the same time and not have their head explode? Really, if religious people were being honest with me and themselves, they would say that this happened because I'm a non-believer. Am I wrong?