ATHIESTS, AGNOSTICS LACK ARGUMENTS FOR HOPE

Q: You stated in a recent column that "on the way down, (faith) is a saving rock." You talk a lot about religious faith, including a belief in heaven, as a source of "hope." Another word for hope in the absence of evidence is wishful thinking.

As a scientist, I find wishful thinking a form of intellectual dishonesty, even if it is a source of comfort for many (perhaps most) people. But I am glad that you at least acknowledge that nonbelievers can also be grateful for their own good fortune, although we, of course, don't attribute that particular good fortune (or someone else's suffering) to God's plan. - S., Durham, N.C., via godsquadquestion@aol.com)

A: My column on hope touched a nerve in my surprisingly large number of atheist and agnostic readers. The weakness of atheism is, as I have said before, not its lack of good arguments against God. They have many good arguments--not good enough, in my view, but still good. They do not, however, have any arguments for hope, which, as your kind e-mail proves, is considered just another form of wishful thinking or magical thinking or intellectual dishonesty.

First of all, the fact that something brings comfort to a grieving heart is not a proof that it is true, but it is also not a proof that it is false. Something can be both comforting and true and hope is one of those things. As you admit, hope is necessary for all people, atheists and believers alike. The only argument is therefore, who has a better grounding for their hopefulness.

For the atheist, there is no immediate evidence for hope. Death is the end of us, evil often triumphs, and as far as human solidarity against the vicissitudes of existence, well, that can often be a groundless hope.

By contrast, the hope in a believer's life is grounded in the faith that God will be with us through all our travails and that we will not be separated from those we love, and that at some point the scales of justice (karma) will be set right. Now, all those beliefs may be false but they are not obviously false. They are not like the belief that the moon is made of cheese, which can be empirically refuted. These are articles of faith rooted not in the evidence of the senses but in the evidence of the human heart.

Perhaps, after death, we will learn by the silence and extinction predicted by the atheists that they were right in their belief that death is the end of us. Perhaps we will discover by the sounds of angel music that the atheists were wrong. Both are beliefs, neither is confirmed or refuted by science. As Galileo observed, "Faith tells us how to get to heaven and science tells us how the heavens go." We will see what we will see.

As for now, let us respect each other's beliefs about the things we cannot know now. I would hope that atheists would at least honor the best traditions of religion by not accusing religion of terrifying and humiliating and coercing its adherents. Surely, some bad religion does that, but the thrust of faith is that it is a free choice to live a better life, a more compassionate life, as a way of honoring God and giving thanks for our blessings. That's the best of faith, and it is the version that ought to be engaged by those who are not yet convinced to make the choice to believe.

The true teachings of all the great religions of the world are not based upon the belief that God is waiting to hurt the unbelievers, but rather that God is waiting in love and hope to receive all those who begin their journey to God in love and hope. Citing examples of perverted religion as if they were normative in order to reject religion is like citing examples of perverted politics as if they were normative in order to reject democracy.

When we consider the God/hope argument from a religious or non-religious point of view we ought to at least have the decency to pick the best examples of the other side, not the most ridiculous. I would say that in the recent anti-religious film, "Religulous," this is precisely the mistake Bill Maher and Larry Charles have made.

If you only interview religious wackos, all you will conclude is that all religion is foolish. However, you will have come to that foolish conclusion by overlooking Mozart and Spinoza, Michelangelo and Kant, Maimonides and Niebuhr. No one is fooled by such an embarrassing intellectual sleight of hand.

Nevertheless, it would be just as wrong to associate all atheists with Bill Maher as it would be to associate all religious leaders with faith-intoxicated ignoramuses. So I would urge all my religious readers to always respect and never demean our atheist brothers and sisters. Many of them have found a way to live lives of great moral virtue without using the tools of faith to construct hope for their lives.

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