Where Do Atheists
Find Comfort
In Times Of Danger?
Betty Fanek
From: "betty fanek"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Sent: September 29, 2001 3:51 AM
Subject: 1 more Q
Hey,
Got one more question for you:
Can you list for me the ways of obtaining comfort that atheists use?
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "betty fanek"
Subject: Re: 1 more Q
Date: September 29, 2001 3:37 AM
I don't understand what you mean when you say "comfort" or what "obtaining comfort" might mean to you when you ask this question
Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six years of service to
people with no reason to believe
From: "betty fanek"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Sent: September 29, 2001 4:42 AM
Subject: Re: 1 more Q
I meant how do atheists find comfort in time of danger other than family, friends, and pets?
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "betty fanek"
Subject: Re: 1 more Q
Date: September 29, 2001 9:55 AM
Atheists find genuine comfort wherever genuine comfort can be found by anybody. A genuine comfort, to me, would be epitomized by actually solving a problem as opposed to masking the pain brought on by the problem. Atheists also indulge in false comforts just like everybody else, with one exception: we don't make available to us the false comforts of religious faith. False comfort is false comfort and sometimes it is comfort enough to avert hysteria, which is the real point of comforting besides feeling good.
The problem with false comfort is that it rarely solves the problem at hand; seldom does it provide lasting relief from the pain in question. Then again, often there are no solutions to certain problems. The pursuit of false comforts becomes quite legitimate in such cases. Of course, facing the problem head on often aggravates the pain which we ultimately seek to relieve, and this is when pursuing false comforts can become problematic.
I think the error behind this question is in seeing religion as unique among the methods humankind has used to cope with the stresses of human life. Specifically, the mistake is in seeing religion as something other than one of these methods. Several of the peripheral elements of religious involvement do fall into the category of genuine problem solving. For example, it has been shown that when seniors get involved in a group or a structured activity, their health benefits considerably. Religion is among such activities. However, the religion, as such, is shown not to offer any benefits itself when we compare the health of those who watch religion on television versus those who watch other types of programming. It's the getting out and becoming involved with others which provide the health benefits of religious activity. But, just like an exercycle will give you the benefit of exercise, the exercycle will not take you anywhere. With a bicycle, you can accomplish both goals.
Whether theist or atheist, we all have quite an arsenal of methods for comforting ourselves which constitute little more than just fooling ourselves for a spell. Do not television, the cinema, literature, music, art, poetry, and other forms of entertainment or "escape" (including what some would call "vice") provide for us a momentary relief from the miseries of being human?
Many have considered religion in the American South to be little more than a form of entertainment. In his interview with Snapping authors Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman (1978), former boy preacher Marjoe Gortner said,
The people who are out there don't see it as entertainment, although that is in fact the way it is. These people don't go to movies; they don't go to bars and drink; they don't go to rock-and-roll concerts -- but everyone has to have an emotional release. So they go to revivals and they dance around and talk in tongues. It's socially approved and that is their escape. It was my duty to give them the best show possible. Say you've got a timid little preacher in North Carolina or somewhere. He'll bring in visiting evangelists to keep his church going. We'd come in and hit the crowd up and we were superstars. It's the charisma of the evangelist that the audience believes in and comes to see. |
But it was this phoniness of the "experience" which eventually drove Marjoe out of the Evangelism business. Even though it was, in fact, entertainment, the people who indulged in the spirituality wrought by showmanship, escape, and feeling good actually thought that this stuff was for real.
When I was traveling, I'd see someone who wanted to get saved in one of my meetings, and he was so open and bubbly in his desire to get the Holy Ghost. It was wonderful and very fresh, but four years later I'd return and that person might be a hard-nosed intolerant Christian because he had Christ. That's when the danger comes in. People want an experience. They want to feel good, and their lives can be helped by it. But then as you start moving into the operation of the thing, you get into controlling people and power and money. |
This is what we can expect if someone takes too seriously anything that is legitimately used solely for entertainment or momentary relief. Marjoe isn't the only one who sees religion as a form of escape. In the Preface to his Androcles and the Lion (1916), George Bernard Shaw saw all forms of spirituality this way:
The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality. |
In his Major Barbara (Act 3), the character Undershaft, an armaments manufacturer, makes a similar point with his daughter, Barbara, an officer of the Salvation Army worker, arguing that his capitalistic point of view offers a drastically different range of opportunity to the poor seeking to better their situations than do her "faith-based ... armies of compassion" (as George W. Bush would put it):
In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage. |
Of course the actual labor which brings the thirty shillings a week may not be any fun, but in the worker ends up with many more choices than does tenant at a Salvation Army shelter.
Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six years of service to
people with no reason to believe
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