We start the beginning of the year at the same place where we ended the year. Why should a calendar year matter when you're on the eternal cosmic timeline? I suppose we need markers to take inventory, but I am more compelled to see what's around the corner so I can build on that inventory.
I last left off on Spitzer and his idea of PED happiness. It all sounds nice, but I was wondering if a God-loving being can be anymore happier than some God-denying one? I know some religious people that I wouldn't want to have a coffee with, and I do have some atheistic friends that are quite a joy to be around. So if Spitzer is correct, then PED happiness can only come from someone truly called to Spirit.
I was reading Robert Barron's recent blog about the rapid rise of the irreligious. He discusses how those who deny the transcendent lose any sense of haste and fall into the "whatever" mindset. Moreover, without Spirit, there is little to be amazed, enchanted, or astonished by. You are locked in a world that serves you and your desire to control it. To counter this, Barron suggests that “those who are tempted to move into secularism, I say, don’t float on the lazy lake; rather, go in haste! Don’t settle for something less than astonishment; be amazed! Don’t fall into spiritual amnesia; treasure!”
Bob also touched upon to absurdness of atheism and its adherence to man for fulfillment. First, quoting Pope Francis: “Once man has lost the fundamental orientation which unifies his existence, he breaks down into the multiplicity of his desires.” Bob then says, “You might say that desire becomes intrinsically dis-ordered, being that it is no longer ordered to its proper object -- the only object that can possibly satisfy a desire that is literally infinite.” And I suppose the infinite is the essence of pervasiveness, endurance, and depth. More PED, less dread.
Recollecting his time away from God, Bob notes, “I'm trying to think back to what motivated me during my atheistic phase. Hmm. A mixture of things: superiority, to be sure. Although "annoyed" by believers, there was a kind of perverse joy involved in skewering them with atheistic arguments to which they had no answer.” Been there, done that. Spiritual pride is bad enough, but manly pride is just stupid!
But then again atheists can't seem to answer some significant questions also: like what happened before the big bang?; or why do we have these superfluous transcendental desires that don't placate evolutionary biology?; or even how my subjective experience of consciousness manifests from my limited grey matter? But all this argumentation also reaps little joy. Who cares if I'm right? I'd rather be True.
Certainly there are atheists that have strong, moral character and can live a life with dignity and purpose. Dennis Prager notes that “these individuals (in the Western world, at least) have simply adopted the values bequeathed by centuries of Judeo-Christian values. They are living on what one author called cutflower ethics.” So these flowers can survive for a certain amount of time, until they don't. And if we don't nurture what we reap, it will all go to shite eventually.
Back to Spitzer. He notes that Jesus saw that correcting our outer lives is hopeless without “first attending to the thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and interior dispositions giving rise to them. Even if we could force ourselves to be on our best behavior, but felt nothing except stoic indifference, contempt for "inferiors", and anger toward "incompetents," our behavior wouldn't mean very much, because our interior attitude would undermine it.” The atheist can only go so far, because no finite desire would impel him/her to have their hearts be moved enough to transform their lives the way Jesus was pointing to.
If you could not cultivate a rich inner life towards Spirit, then there would always be a limit to your happiness. The atheist is always living in a small, conditional universe, while the only way to unlimited happiness is desire for the infinite.
We can't do it alone, because we're never alone.