An Atheist’s Journey

I am grateful for so many things. A Christian thanks God for everything, but the atheist doesn’t know who to thank. In fact, there is no “who” to thank.

But in recent years I’ve been rethinking my attitude toward gratitude. All the self-help gurus tell us that we should have an attitude of gratitude. I first heard this from Anthony Robbins, on his Personal Power tapes, and later I read it in his book “Awaken The Giant Within”. But he will admit that many of his ideas come from others, and after reading dozens of self-help books, I’m convinced that the lineage of the attitude of gratitude idea can be traced back to “Think And Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, published early in the 20th century. And the ideas certainly go further back, probably all the way to the Bible.

When we say Grace at meal time, we are expressing our gratitude for the food, and often for other good things in our life. What is grace? The New World Dictionary (2nd Edition) says of grace: from the Latin, gratia, pleasing, quality, favor, thanks. I’m reminded of the Spanish “gracias” meaning “thanks”, which shares the same root.

As an atheist, I have refrained from saying Grace at meal time because of its religious connotations. “Bless us Oh Lord for these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive,” or something like that. An atheist doesn’t believe in God, and therefore it seems inappropriate to thank God for the food. Shouldn’t we be thanking the farmer, the grocer, the breadwinner, the cook? What’s all this about thanking God?

But who does the farmer thank? What if the weather is bad that year and the crops don’t grow or can’t be harvested? Should we just take the good weather for granted? You can’t thank the weather; that doesn’t make sense! The direct object of the verb “to thank” is a person, or being. Linguistically, then, and perhaps psychologically, we need God in order to have an object to thank, for at least some of those things that we are grateful for.

The hard-core atheist (of which I am one) argues that we shouldn’t be grateful for the good weather. Our gratitude can’t change the weather. For even if we are grateful, our gratitude will not increase the likelihood that the weather will be good in the future. I believe that’s true, but it doesn’t *feel* right. I *feel* that we should be grateful for the good in our lives, even if there is no scientific basis for thinking that the gratitude will keep the good weather coming.

What about the things that gratitude *can* facilitate? For example, when someone invites me to attend the Journey IFC social “FRED” group meeting and provides snacks, shouldn’t I be grateful for that? Of course! Absolutely! There is clearly an identifiable object of my gratitude, namely the person who hosted the meeting and the person who provided the snacks.

Sometimes, however, the object of our gratitude isn’t as obvious, or the chain of gratitude isn’t clear. For example, should I be grateful for the sewer system in our neighborhood? And who in society should I thank for the sewer system? The worker who dug the trenches, the worker who installed the pipes, the worker who mans the sewage processing plant, the vast organization that provides electricity to the sewage processing plant, the plumber who connected the sewer system to my house, the vast network of people who create metal pipes and PVC, the politician who created the legislation which begat the sewer system, the bond holders who bought the bonds that built the system, the tax payer who paid for it. And perhaps dozens of other individuals and groups or organizations that made all of these things possible.

It seems that just about everyone, all of civilization, is responsible for my sewer system.

Who should I thank for civilization?

A voicemail greeting I heard recently ended with, “Have a blessed day.” I found myself feeling both comforted and uncomfortable: comforted because of the well wishes, and uncomfortable because of the words’ challenge to my religious beliefs.  What does it even mean to have a blessed day?  Is “blessed” just one of those words that means “good” or “great”?  Or is it strictly religious?  In the case of this particular voicemail greeting, I know it’s religious, because I know that the woman saying it is a fundamentalist Christian.

As a Catholic growing up, I saw blessings thrown around like confetti at a parade.  At Mass (for me, six days a week), chances are you’d have been blessed at least a few times.  At Confession (in my case, every week), we would recite, “Bless me Father for I have sinned.  It has been one week since my last confession.”  Nearest I could figure, imparting a blessing onto someone meant giving them a shot of the Holy Spirit.  Or at least making the thing being blessed a little holier.

Holy water was water that had been blessed.  Reminds me of the scene in the movie The Exorcist when the priest sprinkles tap water on the possessed girl and she reacts as though the water were blessed.  Holy water was somehow very special.

But I was getting blessed a LOT and I wasn’t getting any holier.  Far from it.  Receiving so many blessings just served to remind me of how sinful I was, and only made me feel guiltier.  They could have dumped me into a bath of holy water and it wouldn’t have washed my soul clean of the sinfulness I felt in that Church.

The superlative adjective describing your day depends on the culture of the well-wisher.  An entrepreneur might say, “Have a profitable day.”  A sailor might say, “May the wind be at your back.”  A fellow teacher will often say, “Have a good class.”  So it’s not so strange that a Christian would say, “Have a blessed day.”  But what does it mean?

The power to bless is reserved to God and to the religious hierarchy.  In the Catholic Church, the priest has the power to bless, and above him the bishop and so on.  It is presumptuous for a mere mortal such as myself to believe that I can bless anything.  Except possibly when someone sneezes and you say, “Bless you.”  Why not just say, “May God bless your day!”, since all blessings must ultimately come from God anyway?

To bless means to make holy.  But to have a “blessed day”?  Does that mean that the day will be holy?  Or does it mean that, because of God’s influence, the day will be extra special, unlike any day before or since?  Do we demean God’s blessing by wishing it upon every day?

I’m not trying to be disrespectful.  Really!  I’m just trying to get at the truth.  And I don’t wish to appear ungrateful for someone’s wish for me to have a blessed day.  I’m sure that her wish is sincere.  But would she wish me a blessed day if she knew that I’m an atheist?  Would her language or attitude toward me change?  Would an entrepreneur wish you a profitable day if he knew that you don’t believe in or value Profit?

Maybe but I doubt it.  The entrepreneur would recoil in horror, unable to believe that someone doesn’t believe as he believes.  And after a perfunctory attempt to convince the other person of his error, the entrepreneur would wander off, probably never to talk to that person again.