Real atheism does not aim to prevent your good self from hoping deeply for a solution, a dream to realize, a desire to fulfill, or an intervention of events to come to thy side when you need it most. It is no“ sin” or“ crime” to want to see your departed loved ones again, or to seek a helping force when you find your best efforts failing in a difficult situation. These deep emotions have made literature, philosophy and poetry possible. Atheism is not that cold hand that seeks to chill your heart with its grip. It is the gentle arm of reality, which slowly relaxes frayed sinews and straightens your spine, ending desperation. The release of the forces behind desperation is a bittersweet experience, but the return to reality that atheism facilitates is the only real chance you have to reshape your life, to heal yourself and to move on. After the personal period of mourning, most of us quietly conclude that it is not possible to really know if there is any continuance after death, and the only thing left to do is to move on with life.
Atheism tells you that regardless of what answer you may or may not think you have received, life can only continue when your eyes finally return to the ground upon which you stand. Many people have gone through their entire lives without even one period in which they believed in God( s) or bore religious convictions of any kind. It is not likely, however, that any of these people ever went without the desire to see their departed loved ones again. After all, don ' t we all wish we could see and hear Christopher Hitchens again, one more time?
Atheism is not against such personal needs( and no atheist activist can change that either – these needs are natural and part of human nature). It is simply against lying to people with such needs, and it gives you the ability to discern. Giving people false assurances is the business of religion. Communist states sought to prohibit people from looking for hope, whereas true atheism is merely an acceptance of facts – that there is no evidence for the claims that religions sell, and that buying into something whose veracity cannot be established is basically allowing yourself to be taken advantage of when you are most vulnerable.
The Right to Pray
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