I used to wonder, what's wrong with religious people? How can they believe in such absurdities? Sometimes I now wonder what's wrong with me that I can't believe in the absurdities that 95% of the people in the world seem to believe in. The fact is, most people are hedonists. They act in the way that increases their pleasure. They indulge in religion because they enjoy it — because it feels good. Atheists tell them to give up their religion because religion is false. But atheists don't have anything to offer them that feels as good to take its place. The philosopher William Barrett, raised a Catholic, became a doubter and agnostic as a scholar and editor. "Beneath all the conflicting clamor of my ideas, over the years there has been deep down the growing hunger to worship," he recently said. Now in his 70s, Barrett has returned to the church and says he can't explain why. (It makes him feel good.)
Napoleon Bonaparte also thought religion a necessity: "How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares, 'God wills it thus."' Will Durant said: "We shall find it no easy task to mold a natural ethic strong enough to maintain moral restraint and social order without the support of supernatural sanctions, hopes and fears." John Stuart Mill also took the pragmatic view: "It is conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable." Atheists may just lack the intuitive, pragmatic guidance that unconsciously determines the belief systems of the conforming majority. Maybe those who wallow in religion, superstition, supernaturalism, mysticism and magic aren't really as stupid as atheists make them out to be. Maybe the lonely, bitter, resentful atheist is the stupid one who can't believe in the rubbish that makes believers happy. Everybody's life is a tragedy, but the life of an atheist seems especially tragic. When he dies he realizes that his life was in vain, that he entered a world that reeked with the stench of religion and leaves still holding his nose. The atheist cannot even look forward to being vindicated. Even if he is right, religionists will die never finding out that they had worshiped a God that didn't exist, had prayed to the wind, had tithed to support priestly parasites, that they were mortals the same as a mouse, that the atheists had been right all along. No, atheists know they will never get even this satisfaction. Perhaps it is time for atheists to give up on eradicating religion and accept it as they accept other incurable diseases and as they accept bad weather, taxes and in-laws as inevitable.
There is always the nagging question of why atheists should care what anybody else believes. Why should they get upset because some (in the atheists' opinions) feebleminded neighbors believe in ghosts, gods and poltergeists?
Jesus Christ was either the son of God or the biggest fraud in all history. I am now beginning to wonder what difference it makes. If believing in Jesus makes people happy — even blissful — if it fulfills an emotional need, if it makes them feel good about themselves, if it gives them an imaginary friend and guardian, if it gives them sustaining hope for an afterlife, what difference does it make if Jesus was the biggest fraud in history? It has taken me a lifetime to even consider such a view. Is falsity an adequate basis for condemning something? C. W. Dalton is a long-time atheist, writer and was well acquainted with James Hervey Johnson. Dalton is the author of The Right Brain & Religion, and Limericks and Rhymes for Critical Times. Editor's Note — Two comments: 1. Cheer up! There are happy atheists; 2. I would leave religion alone if it would leave me alone. It won't. — WBL
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