So at Age 54, Atheism Wasn’t Nurturing My Soul
nadim April 22nd, 2008
After being an atheist my whole life, I decided, as part of a midlife crisis, that there had to be something out there that was better than nothing. Secular humanists say you have to make your own meaning, but when you’re faced with a gigantic universe that doesn’t care about you, it’s hard to do.
With that philosophy, you always wind up being alone. And it’s hard to find meaning when you’re alone. I used to believe in a totally mechanical universe. But if you create something from scratch, you have to start somewhere. Science can’t explain everything. I didn’t even go to the point of asking where the universe comes from.
So at age 54, atheism wasn’t nurturing my soul. I desperately needed to find something that would. The need lay in my stomach like a brick. It made me depressed. So I investigated various religions.
Read the rest of Ed LaBonte’s story here, on the United States Baha’i website.
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- Comments(6)
Great post. Articulated so well, and in such simple language. Something you can’t always do when you’re standing inside.
That’s so true. When I first came across the article I was expecting another long-winded theoretical exploration of the views of the scientists vs the religionists, but the simplicity with which he presents his views, and the satisfaction of heart and mind that he discovers through the Baha’i Faith really captured my attention.
If the things he changed to do were so good, why didn’t he do them before converting?
As an atheist, I can relate to some of what Mr. LaBonte says, though I still quibble with other parts of his reasoning.
He says that Baha’i has made him a better person, which is certainly good. But lots of religions and belief systems do this. It says nothing about their truth.
I don’t think he properly understands Pascal’s Wager. Pascal was speaking of one particular deity, the Christian god. Belief in it grants you eternal life. Belief in another deity sends you to hell. Better to bet on this deity, said Pascal. Mr. LaBonte is not.
Samuel, that’s a question that would probably best be answered by Mr LaBonte himself… unfortunately I don’t know him personally.
Robert, Mr LaBonte mentions in his interview that one of the teachings that touched his heart was the principle of oneness of God. This is a core Baha’i teaching - that the Divine Educators of the past (Buddha, Christ, Muhammad and so on) all spoke of the same deity, albeit in different names and different forms. The perceived differences are not a result of the “truth” of one religion as opposed to the “untruth” of another; rather the description of God is dependent on the collective capacity of humanity at a particular stage in it’s evolution.
To use an example, when children first learn to count, they are given beads or bottle caps to represent numbers. This is a concrete expression of an abstract reality. With time, the child’s understanding advances until it can grasp the intangible concept of numbers and the field of mathematics. That the child isn’t immediately taught trigonometry is not an indictment on the teacher’s knowledge, rather a reflection of the child’s incapacity to grasp the concept at that point in time.
Baha’u'llah describes God as “the unknowable Essence…immensely exalted beyond every human attribute, such as corporeal existence, ascent and descent, egress and regress.”
Samuel, it wasn’t that I was aware of these things I was doing and suddenly changed them because my religion told me to. It’s more that coming from a new perspective I was able to see things that I was unaware of before. Having faith has sort of taken me out of myself. Also some of the changes my wife told me about, I hadn’t been conscious of.
Robert, it’s not specifically Pascal’s argument itself that helps me but a whole constellation of arguments inspired by it. Specifically William James’ “The Will to Believe”, but also including arguments by existentialist philosophers like Soren Kirkegaard. They aren’t logical arguments against atheism, rather they are justifications for faith.
I hope no one takes this as an argument against atheism. I don’t think those kinds of discussions are fruitful because people come to their conclusions from different psychological perspectives. It’s my personal spiritual journey and it’s a lot more emotional than logical. So for me it’s more compelling than a sterile logical argument. I feel like God grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and said “You need Me!”.