Eternal Hopes

In an earlier post, we looked at what it might be like to express our beliefs as hopes, at least those beliefs about which we cannot be certain.

We don’t have a complete understanding of reality since science is still incomplete, and yet we need to make choices about such things to guide our lives. We often treat these as firmly held beliefs based on rational thinking, but the reality is that we’re believing in things that we can’t know are true, yet we still expect with confidence to be the case. In other words, we hope these things are true.

We’ve looked at several examples of common beliefs to see what it looks like to express them as hopes, by comparing statements that could reasonably be made by atheists and Christians. These examples were the meaning of life and the hard problem of consciousness. In both cases, it seemed that expressing one’s beliefs about those topics as hope recognized the uncertainty that still exists. It also revealed a possible benefit in that such language may help defuse the often confrontational nature of conversations in these spaces.

Another possible comparison is one’s view of life after death. In this case, atheists typically do not believe that there is any sort of existence after death, while Christians believe that there will be a re-creation at which time they will be resurrected and live eternally.

Expressed as hopes, an atheist might then say: “I hope we are no more than machines and there is nothing beyond the physical, so that, when we are destroyed, there is no lasting existence other than the lingering after effects of our actions.”

On the other hand, a Christian might say: “I hope that there is more to me than just the material, that I am an image of the eternal, universal creator — a unique individual to be restored in a new physical body.”

In both these cases, the perspectives should influence how the person lives.

An atheist might focus their actions on achieving the best life here, in whatever way they define “best”. This may or may not include seeing intrinsic value in others, since any such assessment would be temporary; it depends on each person’s specific perspective.

Many Christians, on the other hand, see this life as one to be given away in serving others as they look forward to a new life after death. They believe that other humans are intrinsically valuable because there is a unique eternal aspect to them that is a reflection of something higher.

Now, it may be that not everyone will agree with these statements, but I think that they provide ways of expressing belief that could lead to good conversations by discussing whether they are accurate or not for an individual. That’s much different than discussing whether they are accurate in some ultimate manner that must be true for all individuals. Such discussions of hard truth are notoriously difficult, especially in areas for which there is still so much uncertainty. By acknowledging the uncertainty and allowing for individual perspectives, we can have conversations instead of arguments.