It's one of those things theists ask me: If I don't believe in a God or an Afterlife, if there is no higher purpose, why bother living at all? Might I not just as well die and save the hassle? What difference would it make if you'd die today rather than in 50 years?
For some reason, they think this to be a very profound question. It really isn't. In fact, I find the question rather preposterous. Whoever asks it is implying that if they wouldn't believe in a God/Afterlife/Higher Purpose, if they believed life was finite, if believed that life ends at the grave, they would certainly not bother living - Which I think is a rather pathetic statement to make and a testament to a lack of serious consideration of the matter.
Let's try an analogy: Why do you ever go on a holiday trip even though it inevitably ends? Even though there is no higher purpose to it other than that you enjoy it? How can you enjoy a sunset over a beautiful beach if the time you spend there is finite, if it's only two weeks before you'll have to go back to the same old life in the office again?
If theists were actually serious about this mindset, I should expect them to step out of the plane, take a look around the astonishingly beautiful place they've landed, frown, and say something like:
"Pff... yeah it's nice, but so what? How can I enjoy this stay, knowing I have to leave eventually?
Of course, if there was a book subjecting me to nonsensical rules during my stay and promising me that, if I subject to these rules, I get to go on an even better, eternal holiday after this one, then, and only then! could I enjoy my brief stay in this wonderful place."
So, does it make a difference whether I die tomorrow or in fifty years? Certainly not to the universe, that's true. Maybe not even to other people, though I like to think it does. But be that as it may, in any case it does make a rather huge difference to me, and I don't know why I should need any more incentive than that to go on living. I am not opposed to suicide; If you are in full control of your mental faculties and make the informed and well-considered decision that your life really just isn't worth it any more, I think it's your right to end it. But as for me, well, I really like living. For now at least. I enjoy my life, and I will go on living it as long as my life stays enjoyable. So the short answer to "why do you bother living?" is because it's fun. Being alive simply seems to be a more enjoyable state than 'not being alive' - so I'd rather live than not.
In the end it's simply a pretty nonsensical question to start with. Living is a bit like having sex: Affirmative is the default position. The question shouldn't be Why?, it should be, Why not?
For a well-adjusted person, this totally makes sense.
ReplyDeleteHow do you feel about a suicidal person being introduced to religion as a way to convince them that death isn't the best choice?
Or even an Alcoholics Anonymous member being shown religion to get their life back on track?
Hello Grundy,
ReplyDeleteThat is a good question. My general approach to solving problems is "whatever works", so I guess I'd be fine with it, provided that it does work. That is highly questionable though. The impact of "god" on previously god-less individual lives is quite easily testable, so why not check the facts?
The thing about the god-idea is that it tells people they don't hold control over their own lives - that isn't a great incentive to actually get up and change things. Cross-check the results of AA- based self-therapy with the results of actual, science-based, psychological therapies. You'll find that AA doesn't fare that good, and that one of the things the psychologists do different is that they leave out god.
I direct you here for some very sensible words by a social worker, who points out that the faith of the homeless is actually an obstacle to ending their homelessness in the overwhelming majority of cases, because their faith in somebody else (god) controlling their lives makes them see things as happening to them rather than things they do. I quote from the article:
QUOTE:
...they don’t do things, things happen to them. Life is a constant string of uncaused, magically occurring events that seemingly happen out of now where, with no warning, no antecedent, and no ability to be or influenced upon.
Not my will, but his will. His plan. In his hands.
Homeless people put their faith in god because they feel helpless and lack the insight. They often have no clue how they became homeless and have less a clue how stop. I’ve written before about the language I encounter on the job that highlights this lack of awareness. ”Faith” plays in to this lack of awareness. Faith tells us not to try and figure anything out to know for sure, just trust that everything will work out okay. [...]
For the many people in America, “faith” is pretty harmless because it’s not critical in their day to day lives and it’s usually accompanied with behaviors that have been traditionally shown to work. Pray to recover from illness while taking antibiotics. Pray to pass an exam while studying all night. Pray to have kids while taking fertility treatments. Are you really relying on god if you also do things that happen to work without prayer?
In homelessness it’s really easy to see how prayer spectacularly fails. Pray to get a job with no job training and a crummy resume. Pray to get better from cancer with no treatment. Pray to have your addictions removed without actually trying.
END QUOTE
I have a strong suspicion that this effect also keeps the god-idea from being a good help in other areas of changing lives - it merely has a tendency to be credited by people who've done it all by themselves and happened to be religious at the same time. They see their faith as a great help when they actually helped themselves. People who really just rely in faith tend to fail. Hard.
Suicide numbers are also well-documented facts. Without checking the numbers myself, I venture to say that faith will not prove to have a high negative correlation to suicide rates - Religious people kill themselves at least as often as nonreligious ones.
I strongly suspect that religion isn't helpful at all, and so far I've seen no sociological findings to contradict this view, but a great many which could be said to support this notion.
For further reading, here's one of the more credible studies on the suicide-religiosity-correlation:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14504734
Have you encountered Positive Psychology yet in your explorations? It's the science of well-being. I believe it makes religion defunct, since it fulfills the roles that I think draws people toward religion. That's a personal opinion, founded on some of the data coming from positive psych. Martin Seligman measures well-being through five traits he calls PERMA: positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning and accomplishment. It seems to me that religion is structured in a way to provide "false" positives in these categories.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of religion, I think positive psychology is not only fascinating for a humanist such as myself, but perhaps even necessary. With it we can help ourselves and others towards more positive lives without deity. I highly recommend it.
If you've never encountered the subject, a few important books are Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman, Flourish by the same and Flow by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi.
Found your blog through American Humanist Association on Facebook today, and so far I'm enjoying it. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for the response, and for Morgan's. Never heard of Positive Psychology before, I'll look into it.
ReplyDeleteThankfully, I'm not suicidal or drunk enough to need Positive Psych or religion...yet :-)
Hey Morgan!
ReplyDeleteNo, I had not yet heard of positive psychology as a system, but I do read a lot of psych papers and books, and have kinda lived my life by the PERMA points for a few years now, even without knowing it. The thought of a psychology system specifically made for that purpose sounds very interesting though, I'll definitely look into it!
Old post, I know, but I thought I could address this idea of faith and suicide from a personal perspective. I am what you might call a recovering depressed person. My diagnosis at one time was Severe Depressive Disorder. I've held the blade to my wrist, and swallowed the pills with a chaser of alcohol. At that time, I did have faith in God, a personal God who loved everyone, wanted happiness for all, and who would ensure that all things would work out in the end. This faith didn't help me to avoid suicidal impulses. If anything, it made them stronger. The afterlife sounded pretty good in comparison to the life I was living. During this period I also wound up homeless for a time. Faith didn't help me with that either.
ReplyDeleteTherapy, medication, and actually doing something helped all of that. The quote Philipp provided resonates pretty well with the attitude I had before I started doing something. Things were happening to me, I had no control, things were supposed to just work out, etc. Recognizing my power, and that I had choices that I could make, was a big part of crawling out of that hole.