I recently had a death in my family. After a beautiful funeral with singing and lovely stories, and frequent references to God that weren't oppressive or excluding, a minister closed the service with a short sermon. As he spoke, I had to suppress a lot of anger and put it away to think about for another time - I didn't want what had been a really special service to be ruined by his inappropriate, even cruel, ideas.
The minister's central message was about how anything good came from his god, how all strength came from his god, and how love and goodness were IMPOSSIBLE without his god. He was adamant that those who don't believe in such cannot have strength and cannot experience love.
All of that is bollocks and it insults those of us who have never found strength, nor love, nor anything, via a belief in a god.
Love is real. It is not imaginary. Love is a bond in someone or to something. To love is to cherish a person or thing. A person's feelings of love can be based in romantic or sexual feelings, but it also can be experienced without those - it can be based in someone or something that is inspiring or comforting or delightful. It is beyond affection - it is a feeling that generates acts of loyalty, devotion, concern, even obligation on the part of the person who loves.
At its best, love inspires us to care and to have compassion. At its best, it is what the Bible says it is in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth." It absolutely can protect, build trust, cultivate hope, and, yes, persevere - but I disagree that it always does those things, as the Bible says. Love takes work and, indeed, love can fade, or even end.
In 2005, a research team published a groundbreaking study that included the first functional MRI (fMRI) images of the brains of individuals in the throes of romantic love. The team analyzed 2,500 brain scans of college students who viewed pictures of someone special to them and compared the scans to ones taken when the students looked at pictures of acquaintances. Photos of people they romantically loved caused the participants’ brains to become active in regions rich with dopamine, the so-called feel-good neurotransmitter.
Music is universally accepted as something helpful during stressful and traumatizing periods, and people embraced the music they loved as COVID-19 spread insidiously around the globe during the Spring of 2020, as people sang to each other from their balconies, performed virtual fundraising concerts, created both silly and serious tunes about hand washing, physical distancing, and other aspects of pandemic life.
Habitat for Humanity does amazing work, and central to that work is that it "brings people together to build homes, communities and hope." Habitat says that it does that work because it is "seeking to put God’s love into action." But you can take "God's" out and it still makes perfect sense to me, a secular humanist: putting love into action to bring people together to build homes, communities and hope.
As I have noted in other blogs, I had several moments of severe hopelessness as a teen, as I tried to navigate a dysfunctional home, an abusive parent, and other family members who avoided even acknowledging what was happening, let alone facing it. Trying to believe in a god and praying to, desperately, for help and strength left me feeling even more alone, more despondent, more hopeless. It made me feel like a failure. It never helped. What got me through those times, instead, what gave me strength to get through it and away from it, was slowly letting go of seeking help from something unseen and unfelt, and instead realizing and discovering and feeling and slowly cultivating my own sense of self, and liking myself, and seeing people survive and thrive through a great deal of hard work - no prayers necessary. It was seeing the world as something so much bigger than any religion defined it. It was seeing the universe as neutral, not as a thinking being, with feelings, but just as reality, with no judgement, with no intent, but full of possibilities - far more than any religion ever promised.
Atheists/secular humanists don't think poorly or unkindly of people who find comfort in a belief in an invisible, magical friend. But many of us cringe at people saying, "We survived because God was looking out for us," thinking about just how much that statement hurts parents who lost a child - they've just been told God wasn't looking out for their little one. And I do think poorly of someone who would say at a funeral, without knowing everyone there, that strength and love come exclusively from a god.
Love can be a source of strength, and both are absolutely possible WITHOUT A BELIEF IN A GOD.
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