5. Grave Doubts
GRAVE DOUBTS
[Poety not included because of rights restrictions.]
The subject of death has been addressed by a majority of the great thinkers because it is the last “enemy” and the one common experience we are all forced to face. It is the great human equalizer. But it is also the one subject that is still shelved in the category of “the Unknown,” or relegated to a topic that is taboo in polite conversation—the intruder upon happy conversations. The existential philosopher Albert Camus (1913–1960) said that death is philosophy’s only problem. Quite a significant problem, I might add. In spite of all our great learning, this remains the one area where skepticism and agnosticism abound.
In the arena of birth we have somewhat lifted the veil, and have even registered the sounds and impulses to which the baby responds while still in her mother’s womb. In the realm of sickness and disease, while new maladies seem to lift their sinister heads and keep the researchers busy, great strides have been made to find cures for many others. The frontiers of knowledge continue to expand with such rapidity that we live with accomplishments undreamed of a generation ago.
Many new vistas have been opened, but the real and felt blindness about death is total. It is the one subject that, according to Aldous Huxley, we have not succeeded in vulgarizing. What is it about death that casts this haunting spell, and has handcuffed the most “civilized” of our societies?
Here, atheism meets its nemesis. Any system that does not know the origin of human beings and cannot give our reason for being, certainly must remain silent on our destiny, or at best, argue for nothingness. American psychologist and philosopher William James said, “Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.”[1] Apart from the bid for suicide, which is an expression of unmitigated hopelessness and abandonment, the reluctance to face death is quite universal. It is the one experience when we leave behind everything we have and take with us everything we are. It is the moment of truth, where there is no more showmanship. It is the individual alone against destiny.
The actor/director Woody Allen said of death, “It’s not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” If he is, indeed, as fearless about it as he claims, the good news for Allen is that he will die, but the bad news is that he will have to be there. When all is said, is it not this aloneness and inevitability that makes the event more dreadful? In death, atheism can offer no comfort whatsoever, and as in the question of our origin, leaves one in the state of an unthinking atom—out of flux, nothing but flux.
Bertrand Russell, without apology, stated the atheistic viewpoint on death:
Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.[2]
In the end, the atheistic view reduces the botanist from studying daffodils to fertilizing them, the scientist from measuring the “big bang” to becoming a small fizzle, and the geologist from investigating the geological column to becoming embedded in one of its layers. Is it any wonder that when H. G. Wells, the ardent evolutionist and disciple of Huxley, saw at the very end of his life all his humanistic optimism crash in disaster, he wrote his last book, which is nothing less than a scream of despair. Malcolm Muggeridge poignantly described Wells’s heart-rending gasp:
Wells turned his face to the wall, letting off in Mind at the End of Its Tether, one last, despairing, whimpering cry which unsaid everything he had ever thought or hoped. Belatedly, he understood that what he had followed as a life-force was, in point of fact, a death wish, into which he was glad to sink the little that remained of his own life in the confident expectation of total and final obliteration.[3]
But human beings are too thoughtful to succumb to such a disastrous and know-nothing view of life. Every fiber within us cries out that there must be more than this.
Relationships Ruptured
At different junctures in life we feel the dark shadow of death, and our hearts cry out to know what it all means. There are several reasons for this. First, death is the severance of all relationships, with a sense of finality. Life may have its dreams, hopes, aspirations, and accomplishments, but in the long run, our lives are really built on some strong bond of relationship with significant others. To have this relationship threatened by sickness or temporary partings is endurable. But to face a separation that is final, and often sudden, seems to put life in the hands of some sharp, implacable hostility controlling our destinies.
Simone de Beauvoir described her mother’s death “as violent and unforeseen as an engine stopping in the middle of the sky.” All the glory of an individual is suddenly reduced to a cold piece of clay, and the mind that once brought to birth ideas and machines is now extinct.
Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote his poem “In Memoriam A.H.H.” after the sudden death of his friend Arthur Hallam. In that protracted masterpiece written over several years, Tennyson, through the process of grieving, struggled to know what ultimate power manages the fate of humanity.
I have quoted several stanzas here to reveal the depth of his struggle and his realization of the philosophical implications from the choice between atheism and God. In the early part of the poem, with bitter submission, he voiced a veiled hostility toward God.
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
Several stanzas later his great struggle emerges as he alternates between God and nature, deeming first the one and then the other in control.
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life, . . .
“So careful of the type?” but no.
From scarpéd cliff and quarried stone
She cries, “A thousand types are gone;
I care for nothing, all shall go.
“Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death;
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.” And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seemed so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law—
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed—
Who loved, who suffered countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or sealed within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music matched with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.[4]
Tennyson’s struggle is an “evolutionary” battle that predates the Darwinian thesis. It painfully raises the question of whether mindless nature is indeed our primordial soup. Notice carefully the vivid expressions of emotional struggle in a theoretical philosophy where God does not exist. Of Nature he says, “So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life.” How can there be a larger “purpose” with no individual “purpose”? That is really the question.
But also notice the counterpoint he makes to that idea. Has Nature truly been that careful of the “type,” or did it really emasculate several others as humans emerged by imitating Nature, “red in tooth and claw”? These questions deliver a mortal wound to atheism because men and women, in naturalism’s view, have survived by “tearing each other in their slime.”
As profoundly as Tennyson deals with these issues, he finds two deductions to be unshakable: our relationships severed by death produce a heart of agony, and our destiny is bound up with our origin. Hope cannot be smuggled in by the naturalist’s word game.
In the children’s film Prancer we witness a very tender scene. The little girl in the lead role, Jessie, has recently lost her mother and converses with her friend. The friend asserts that she cannot believe in anything she cannot see. “But what about God?” says Jessie. “You can’t see him, either. Does that mean you don’t believe in him?” Her friend confesses her doubts about God for the same reason, and a surprised and agitated Jessie replies, “But if there’s no God, there’s no heaven. And if there’s no heaven, then what about my mother?”
The human heart yearns for a meeting again, someday. And death just cannot destroy that longing. The Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850), in his poem “We Are Seven” speaks of this expression of the human heart.
. . . I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said:
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head. . . .
“Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?”
“How many? Seven in all,” she said,
And wondering looked at me.
“And where are they? I pray you tell.”
She answered, “Seven are we,
And two of us at Conway dwell
And two are gone to sea.
“Two of us in the churchyard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And in the churchyard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother. . . .”
“You run about, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the churchyard laid,
Then ye are only five. . . .”
“How many are you then,” said I,
“If they two are in heaven?”
Quick was the little Maid’s reply,
“O master! we are seven.”
“But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!”
’Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, “Nay, we are seven!”[5]
The idea that a relationship can be severed with such finality finds no friendly reception, even in the mind of a child. However, this is not the only question death raises for which we crave an answer; there are other questions invoked by the mind. What about final justice, if death is the end of all things?
English poet and author William Shenstone (1714–1763), in one of his essays, complained that laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture that the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are entangled in them. If one were to add up the unsolved crimes over the centuries, the question of justice only looms larger. In our present day, it has been said that in some nations (where, for the sake of security, homes are turned into fortresses) the guilty walk free, while the innocent live behind bars.
Winston Churchill spoke for the whole tormented world when he cried for justice in pursuing the tormentor.
I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified, thereby. If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.[6]
Anyone who saw the courtroom scene during the trial of Adolf Eichmann will never forget when a cry for justice resounded from the ranks of the onlookers. Life nudges us in our consciences with its still, small voice that justice must be done if not in this world, then in the world to come. Hence, the question rages in our hearts whether death ends that possibility for justice—or guarantees it.
So strong is this instinct in human beings to believe that death, and that which follows after death, are indispensable to balance out this world of wrong, that even atheistic religions, such as Buddhism, and monistic ones, such as Hinduism, invoke the Karmic law to work out evil and prosper the good. They cannot keep silent on the evils so evident.
Probably no one felt this issue of justice more deeply than did Job, with his deep commitment to God. In the biblical narrative, he lost his family, his wealth, and his health. Finally, his three friends arrived to inundate him with words which, summarized in one sentence, meant, “You are getting your due reward, Job.” But Job argued repeatedly for his innocence. While the book, purpose, and teaching of Job go far deeper than my present application, it is, nevertheless, significant to note that at one point Job cried out, “If a man die, will he live again?” Somehow Job felt that the introduction of the right answer here had everything to do with justice and could mitigate his suffering.
If it is not the specifics of a ruptured love, or the unsatisfied hunger for the balances to be set straight, there is that which Solomon so well described:
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet, they cannot fathom what God has done from the beginning to the end (Eccl. 3:11–12).
Herein is the tension, says Solomon: God has put eternity in our hearts. Yet, we cannot fathom the beginning from the end. This is the classic heart-mind conflict. Human beings, in their hearts, yearn for eternity, or at least sense the need for an eternal knowledge not bound by death. But our minds cannot deliver it. So ingrained is this yearning within us that to children death is an intrusion that has to be explained. They cannot conceive of a life relegated to a memory. Somehow, the eternity within the heart militates against the finality within their experience.
At least one other reason why death casts its long shadow over every human being is the deeply felt anxiety that death may not be the end, and that judgment will become a reality. For some this turns into an obsessive fear; for others it remains a sporadic concern. Every religion in the world staves off the possibility of judgment with carefully planned ceremonies and duties performed at the burial of the dead, and certain rites of passage that must not be violated.
The questions about death demand answers, but atheism has none because there is no heaven to be gained and no hell to be shunned. Life finishes with the last heartbeat: all relationships are severed, all endeavors are ended, the arm of justice is cut short, eternity in the heart has been swallowed up by the finality of experience. There is nothing to fear or to hope for, no God to meet, and no hope to anticipate—all is truly and ultimately ended.
Having killed God, the atheist is left with no reason for being, no morality to espouse, no meaning to life, and no hope beyond the grave. Significantly, the absence of future hope has an amazing capacity to reach into the present and eat away at the structure of life, as termites would a giant wooden foundation. Hope is that indispensable element that makes the present so important. The athlete labors with the hope of victory. The researcher works diligently in the hope of a breakthrough. Every human endeavor has a hope, and if life itself has none, the application is foreshortened and the now is squandered away in the absence of any future gains.
There is a complete sense of alienation in the world one hundred years after Nietzsche. It is this utterly morbid and hopeless philosophy that has sent many of our youth into a search for other realities. Those who do not have hope, in an effort to drown their despair, turn to drugs or alcohol or other experiments that they think will break this stranglehold of futility. The farcical and the absurd are hallmarks of a trapped society, devoid of all hope. Why have our young people turned to drugs in such large numbers, and why are they opting for other states of consciousness? It is because of the unbearable emptiness they face with a philosophy of life that offers no hope and no answers.
After writing Brave New World, Aldous Huxley spent the latter years of his life seeking other realities in drugs. Huxley is the one who, in his book Island, had his hero say, “What a comfort to be in a place where the Fall [of man] is an exploded doctrine.” After wrenching the past from the hands of a divine Creator, we barter away the present, convinced that there is nothing to hope for in the future. The eclectic composer John Cage recalled a lecture in which the New York painter, Willem de Kooning, responded to a questioner by saying, “The past does not influence me. I influence it.” By rewriting the past, we have changed its influence on us. Our generation has nothing to look forward to but oblivion. The entailments of this are terrifying: cloning, drugs, AIDS, suicide and euthanasia, alcoholism, broken homes, crime, child pornography, terrorism, and a host of other problems that are heartbreaking. It is a short step from the “exploded” doctrines of the past to the disintegration of hope for the future.
Indeed, one author has observed:
In the 1950s, kids lost their innocence. They were liberated from their parents by well-paying jobs, cars, and lyrics in music that gave rise to a new term—the generation gap.
In the 1960s, kids lost their authority. It was the decade of protest—church, state, and parents were all called into question and found wanting. Their authority was rejected, yet nothing ever replaced it.
In the 1970s, kids lost their love. It was the decade of me-ism, dominated by hyphenated words beginning with self: self-image, self-esteem, self-assertion. It made for a lonely world. Kids learned everything there was to know about sex but forgot everything there was to know about love, and no one had the nerve to tell them there was a difference.
In the 1980s, kids lost their hope. Stripped of innocence, authority, and love, and plagued by the horror of a nuclear nightmare, large and growing numbers of this generation stopped believing in the future.[7]
I would add that in the 1990s, we lost our ability to reason. The power of critical thinking has gone from induction to deduction and very few are able to think clearly anymore. I have often said the challenge of the truth speaker today is this: How do you reach a generation that listens with its eyes and thinks with its feelings?
Our young people today are living with deep-seated fears because of all they see around them and feel within them. One young man, a friend of an acquaintance of mine, longing for some hope, some dream to cling to that would transcend the fetters of this world, found no answer from the world that had killed God. He chased other realities that only enmeshed him in deeper enslavements. His hopelessness represents a malady of all our youth who cry out for hope but find none in this Nietzschean world. This young man finally ended it all, but not before baring his heart in pathetic sentiments:
[Poety not included because of rights restrictions.]
Nietzsche’s character, “the madman” (in his parable by the same title) said that maybe his time had not yet come. Judging by the anguish of our youth, his time has come, and he has arrived. Atheism has borne this offspring, and it is her legitimate child—with no mind to look back to for his origin, no law to turn to for guidance, no meaning to cling to for life, and no hope for the future.
This is the shattered visage of atheism. It has the stare of death, looking into the barren desert of emptiness and hopelessness. Thus, the Nietzschean dogma, which dawned with the lantern being smashed to the ground, now ends in the darkness of the grave.
Questions for Study and Discussion