What's in it for YOU?

In a comment on Monday's post, I made the following offer, which I repeat here in the hope that a willing believer (or nonbeliever) will see it and would like to take me up on it:

Anyone, believer or non-believer, who would like to share what you believe (or don't believe), you are invited to do so in a comment here. And tell us what's in it for you, if you'd like to try to put that into words.

Another way of asking "what's in it for you" might be:

What is it about your beliefs or nonbeliefs that makes your life better?

What's in it for you?

A close friend is telling me he can't see anything in it for me, believing that God doesn't exist and death is final.

I mean, you've thrown away a crutch used by hundreds of millions of people on Earth to salve their fears and griefs about dying. You've yanked off your neck a 2,000-year-old talisman for smoothing everything out and helping you believe that everything's going to turn out all right, your sexy young body restored and you reunited with loved ones. And for your remaining time on Earth, you've thrown away a top non-pharmaceutical remedy for getting high. How can you give all that up?
    Plus, you've made yourself a target for evangelicals who think you're ripe for plucking. I know that annoys you, despite the interesting posts their arguments have led to.
    And what about the awkward situations you've created for yourself over major American holidays? "Not celebrating Christmas—what's wrong with you?" I mean, after awhile, what do you say to that?
    Wouldn't it be easier to just go along with it all? God exists, hears and answers our prayers, gets one day a week and special holidays, the whole nine yards.

You mean, I should just fake it?

No, no, of course I didn't mean that. Faking it would just avoid some of the awkwardness, and maybe the evangelicals. You'd still have to anticipate death without a potion, you'd have to deal with the cracks in life without putty and a trowel.

Are you serious? I have to ask. I mean, even you who are asking me this seem to realize that I'd have to believe things that I'm convinced are almost certainly not true. You don't believe them yourself! How have you answered these questions?

<He turns slightly red and giggles nervously> Uh, well, you know, I...I get unsure at times and wonder....I wish that I could overcome my reservations and stop not believing....You know?

I'm still listening.

Okay, okay. Just tell me, then. Don't you sometimes want to just get it all over with, kill yourself? How do you remain mostly cheerful? How do you enjoy life?

Ah, so you've been thinking about ending it all! Why didn't you say so? What are friends for?

First of all, yes, of course, it's awkward sometime. Especially when you forget to be compassionate. But awkwardness is a relatively small thing, momentary.
    Second, if you don't believe because you can't delude yourself, what's to be gained from beating yourself up?
    Third, take pride in your brave, independent mind and your well-earned moral discernment. You're a man, my friend, and a good one.
    Fourth, nothing else has really changed from ceasing to believe the untrue. The universe is no less amazing—maybe seems even more wondrous. Earth is no less marvelous—maybe seems even more beautiful. And life here and now is more precious for its evanescence.
    Fifth and final, don't postpone the important stuff. Love. Be constructive. There's no hereafter for making amends for hurting others.

"It is difficult for us to contemplate...."

A passage from Julian Barnes's recent book of ruminations on death, Nothing to Be Frightened Of, that I found particularly compatible with my own view:

It is difficult for us to contemplate, fixedly, the possibility, let alone the certainty, that life is a matter of cosmic hazard, its fundamental purpose mere self-perpetuation, that it unfolds in emptiness, that our planet will one day drift in frozen silence, and that the human species, as it has developed in all its frenzied and over-engineered complexity, will completely disappear and not be missed, because there is nobody and nothing out there to miss us. This is what growing up means. And it is a frightening prospect for a race which has for so long relied upon its own invented gods for explanation and consolation. Here is a Catholic journalist rebuking Richard Dawkins for poisoning the hearts and minds of the young: "Intellectual monsters like Hategod Dawkie spread their despairing gospel of nihilism, pointlessness, vacuity, the emptiness of life, the lack of significance anywhere at any time and, in case you don't know this useful word, floccinaucinihilipilification." (It means "estimating as worthless.") Behind the excess, and the misrepresentation, of the attack, you can smell the fear. Believe in what I believe—believe in God, and purpose, and the promise of eternal life—because the alternative is [expletive] terrifying.... [pp.171-172]

Half a world population ago

In 1968, a couple of years after Lunar Orbiter I made the first images of Earth—back when the planet's human population was half what it is today—I gave a talk recommending zero population growth at a meeting of a chapter of the American Association of University Women.

Many of those present had already heard the term zero population growth, and some may have read Stanford University ecologist Paul Ehrlich's bestseller of that year, The Population Bomb, which was among my primary sources of information. The basic idea was that if humans, on average and as a personal commitment, produced just enough offspring to replace themselves (two per couple), then population could remain approximately constant. Zero population growth. Or, as an entry in Wikipedia puts it, "In the long term, zero population growth can be achieved when the birth rate of a population equals the death rate...."

Ehrlich's predictions of worldwide famines between 1970 and 1985 because of overpopulation may have failed in their details, but few informed people today doubt that overpopulation has driven and continues to drive global warming, including unmistakable changes in weather patterns, shrinking polar icecaps, and the rising acidity of oceans (some of the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere going into the formation of carbolic acid)—all of which have stark consequences for life on earth.

For along with rising numbers of humans come their rising expectations, which can be summarized briefly as expecting to live like an American. You know, drive an SUV and produce, by Third World standards, an astounding amount of garbage.

I don't know how accurate Erhlich's 1968 prediction was for when the Earth's population would double (I'd have to read his book again to check), but he did expect it to double. He knew how difficult it would be to achieve ZPG, because, to quote Wikipedia again, "a country's population growth is often determined by economic factors, incidence of poverty, natural disasters, disease, etc."

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, here are the Earth's population figures for 1966 and 2008: 3,416,212,203 and 6,677,602,292 (doubling in those 42 years). Its prediction for the next 42 years (2050) is 9,392,797,012. While that would be a growth of less than half the preceding period, remember that the extra people will be hustling to realize their growing expectations...so long as conditions don't worsen to the point where such expectations are impossible to maintain and many will give up hustling in favor of desperately hoping and waiting for an afterlife.

Wait...or hustle?

Thought for the day

Reading Dick and Felix Francis's 2007 novel, Dead Heat, this morning, I found on pages 176-177:

Who was it, I thought, who said, "Things may come to those who wait"?
    ...
    I asked my computer who said the quote. It came back with the answer: Abraham Lincoln. But his full quote was: "Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle."

I too asked my computer about the quote, and a number of sites have it and attribute it to Lincoln, but none of the ones I found indicate where or when Lincoln wrote or uttered it.

A plumbing company (I don't think it was Joe the Plumber's) recast the first clause in the more New Age or New Testament way: "Good things [emphasis mine] come to those who wait, but only the things left over by those who hustle." (Strict New Agers and fundamental New Testament folks, of course, don't include the second part, intent as they are to sit back and wait for the good things to roll in without any more effort than it takes to be optimistic.)

The intent of Lincoln's statement seems to be to recommend hustling as the way to get the best things, since otherwise you'll get only the things that the hustlers didn't manage to get or didn't want.

Of course, many a hustler comes a cropper. And some waiters come into a fortune. I wonder whether Lincoln said anything about luck? Of course, there's the business of the "Lucky Penny" charm. Was that a Lincoln penny?

The only possible Lincoln quote containing "luck" that I could find through a spot of googling was one site's claim that Lincoln said (or wrote): "The harder I work, the luckier I get." Lincoln really did seem to recommend that we hustle.