Post Turkey Day

We had a quiet little Thanksgiving here in the great north east, a place some consider to be the center of the universe, or perhaps at the moment, a great gaping black hole that threatens to suck everyone and everything in with its financial collapse.

Regardless, we had a bountiful thanksgiving dinner. We had purchased a 13lb turkey at the farmers market. It was the smallest one they had and I don't think a single ounce was from water-injection. It was possibly the best (and continues to be on day 3 of turkey for lunch and dinner) turkey I can remember.

And life rolls on. And on.

One of our favorite sources of entertainment, bloggingheads.tv, has had more than one diavlog (its bloggingheads lingo) comment on the notions of being thankful for atheists vs. theists. Specifically, without a god to be thankful to for everything, can atheists truly be thankful, and if so, how do they do it? Well, of course we can, and both Bob Wright and George Johnson answer that question quite well, I think. Not to mention that Bob's conversation with Joel Achenbach is really fun and entertaining. But anyway.

Which brings me to another topic, often discussed amongst studies of atheism vs. theism: happiness. Some studies have shown that American atheists tend to be less happy, at least on paper, and mostly through their own reporting. I think what is more likely is that the way atheists and theists define happiness may be very different(maybe) or that perhaps atheists tend to be a bit more honest with themselves (and questionnaires) when it comes to reporting their sense of happiness. I have always felt that one of the fundamental purposes of faith is to release oneself of responsibility for certain things. If you don't know where your next meal will come from, a situation I'm sure many atheists and religiously faithful find themselves in these days, this situation causes a lot of stress. However, the atheist most likely is considering only the reality of not knowing where the meal (or money for it) may come from and so sets about it. The theist does and feels pretty much the same, but also has some extra little boost they can use when they are feeling particularly hopeless, and that is that a) God will provide or b) everything that happens is God's will. While it doesn't seem very comforting to me to consider that I'm going hungry because God planned it that way, I can see where it may reduce my stress just an eensy bit or at least my sense of personal failure or despair to feel that I am not really at fault for my predicament or for failing to find a positive outcome. So, yes, I'm hungry, but somehow its serving a higher purpose.

And if the industrious atheist and theist do find their next meals, they will both be happier for it, but the theist is happy to have a meal and also grateful to god for having provided it and thus feels more justified or assured that there is a god. Its a positive feedback loop. The atheist, most likely, is happy to be eating but pretty unhappy about being in that situation and generally feels less than happy on the whole.

This is a topic I think about quite a bit. There has also been a lot done on this (or similar) topic in general lately. There is this Slate article which refers to this Science article and this book. And it seems that bloggingheads.tv has had many people discussing the origins of morality and the misnomer that it relies upon religious belief. Surprise, it seems like morality and religion are not actually dependent upon each other at all. Or perhaps, if you've had your eyes open for the past 10,000 years, not so much of a surprise (or 6,000 years for you YECs). Why do I think about atheism so much? Well, perhaps it comes with age and becoming more self-conscious. I would hope that as humans mature they feel compelled to examine their own inner workings. Perhaps is where the mid-life crisis comes from. Having acheived some level of contentment with their lives through hard work or other means, people come to the point where they start to examine themselves. Perhaps the mid-life crisis is the result of existential upset when the examination happens or perhaps the crisis occurs as a means of running away from the examination altogether. And does the mid-life crisis require that you attain that contentment in advance of your ability to handle the introspection? Has our crashing economy, and crashing global economies in general, removed us all (except for they that already have means to pursue introspection at leisure) from the danger of facing the dreaded midlife crisis? I mean, who has time to ditch your wife and kids and buy a sports car while the economy crashes around you? Only people who don't have to worry about economy because they have enough money, I guess. So in large part, the title of my blog becomes obsolete for 99% of us (myself included).

So, hooray! We've finally done away with the scourge of the midlife crisis. Unfortunately, the solution was to replace it with something else; whole life crisis.