Questions for Atheists: What are you thankful for (and to)?

What am I thankful for? For being alive, for waking up every morning, for breathing, for the beautiful state I live in (Oregon).

Who am I thankful to? Well, here’s the difference between you and I, I guess. I don’t thank the world or nature or the universe. Being thankful for what I have doesn’t necessarily mean that I need to be thankful to something or someone. It’s just a feeling… like happiness… I don’t have to be happy to someone. Sometimes I’m just happy. 🙂

Oh, you might like to read a very interesting post on being thankful on this blog: http://greenerview.blogspot.com.

Take care!

I’m thankful for many things. I’m thankful to people. The main thing I don’t like about Christianity is that it devalues human goodness, giving thanks to God all the time for wonderful things that human beings do. I’d rather thank the real sources of generosity and charity — people.

To science: First, because according to historical life-expectancy tables, I’d probably be dead now without it, or at least on the way out. Second, for asserting that the universe is understandable and inspiring me to try to understand it; the world would be a dreary place indeed otherwise.

To Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, and other great thinkers and skeptics, past and present: For helping me discover what truth was. For helping me discover why I should care about truth.

To the infrastructures of thought, culture, and society, and more generally to the past: For one thing, communicating the rest of this would be pretty hard if those before me hadn’t decided that developing languages and alphabets was a worthwhile endeavor.

On the same theme, to those in the past that took the trouble to write things down: Because they are of enduring interest.

To Al Gore: For being a modern-day don Quijote. And to the other idealists as well, because you give birth to our future.

To those who make peace, but also to those who will sacrifice their own peace to protect the peace of others.

To xkcd: For making the world a weirder place.

To the National Merit Scholarship: Because I’d almost certainly have been unable to afford college without it. By taking an investment in my future, you created it.

To my students: Thanks for letting me share my passions with you.

To the public: For supporting the endeavors of myself and other scientists, even when you don’t understand what we’re doing or see directly why it’s in your interest to do so. That’s a lot of trust to place in us, and we appreciate it.

To all the people of the world: Because everything I have today has passed through many hands en route to mine. Thanks for sharing your skills, your thoughts, and your time. Thanks for your diversity of concerns, so that we may all follow our own paths. To the farmers, doctors and nurses, architects and bricklayers, and all others who touch my life in ways all too easy to overlook, I sincerely hope that I will be able to repay that debt by touching your life in ways equally unrecognized.

Likewise, to those I am taking for granted without realizing it: Because if I don’t even realize it, you must be doing something right.

To ____: Because ________________________________.

To those who care. To those with passion. To those with integrity. To those without fear. To those who believe truth is a worthwhile goal and defend it with care, passion, integrity, and fearlessness. To those that look at the road we’ve traveled in the past and try to project its course into the future. To those who lead crusades and revolutions of ideas. To those that follow those leaders. To the beats of a different drummer. To the borogoves. To all who have ever published ideas anonymously when they would have received greater or quicker acceptance with their names attached. To all who have ever published ideas anonymously because no alternative existed. To those who challenge assumptions. To those who tell jokes that they know most people won’t understand. To the poets, to the playwrights, to the authors, to the musicians and composers, to the painters and sculptors, to my fellow scientists, to all who choose to express themselves artistically. To those who see everything as art and don’t care whether others recognize it. Once again, to those who care.

To friends and family: For assisting me in my journey up to this point, so that I may realize the above and for so many other reasons.

What about things like good health, fortunate financial circumstances, life and liberty and happiness, etc.?

Respectively, to science, to society, and to those who believe that just governance exists so fervently that as a result it does.

I’m thankful that I was born in the time I was. With the discoveries of science, our lives are a whole lot more comfortable than they have been in the past. We understand so much about our universe and our place in it. We live in a relatively tolerant and open-minded society.

I hope (and pray?) that these trends continue and not slip backwards, as many in our population would have be the case.

Atheists thank the “intermediaries” as you so offensively put it.
You know, The people who actually done whatever it is we are thankful for.

I am thankful to my long line of ancestors flowing back through the eons as various forms of life. I find it very interesting how many theists find atheism and agnosticism devoid of any spirituality. I find it very meaningful that I am connected to every living thing on this planet through relationships that were set down so long ago the numbers are abstractions. And through all of that, I have wound up with the cushiest life on this planet thanks to genetic modification, mechanical advantage and scientific advancement. Why on earth would I not be thankful given that?
But thankful to is another matter. I guess to the cosmos at large, if anything. The universe is an amazing place. I wouldn’t want to lessen it by making up some paradigm just to capture its vastness in the tiny confines of the human mind.

Where a particular person, or a human-based abstract concept (like “goodness“) is involved, I thank them directly.

If my feelings of gratitude are inspired by a wholly natural phenomenon – one that my reason tells me is not caused by a conscious being – I have a sort of dissonance. And I have a choice. Just as the person looking at an optical illusion has a dissonance. Their intuitive understanding tells them one thing, but their reason tells them something else. And they have a choice: do they trust their eyes, or their reason?

I choose to trust my reason (always aware that it is imperfect and subject to correction), but that doesn’t remove the emotion of gratitude for (to take tonight’s example) a luminous and breathtaking full moon. The emotion cries out for an object – someone to thank – but my reason says there is nobody to thank. I can either pretend there is someone (and perhaps, with practice, come to actually believe it), in order to satisfy the instinctive emotion; or I can leave the emotion unsated, and my reason intact.

Your question is a legitimate one, and although many people on both sides won’t feel as I do, I think there is a conflict that each of us – religious and non-religious – has to resolve in many different areas of our lives, between what feels true and what objective reason supports.

– Tim –

PS: Thanks for pointing out the fact that Thanksgiving is a perfect crossover holiday – something that atheists and theists can share without any compromise of integrity on either side. I made a blog entry a while ago about humanist holidays, and didn’t even think to put Thanksgiving on there. Which is a serious lapse, since, as a Canadian with a lot of American friends living overseas, I actually get to celebrate it twice most years.

Just one question: if one is “thankful” to a deity, does that mean that one feels that this deity somehow pulled cosmic strings one one’s behalf? Then, why for you and not for someone else who just had something bad happen to them?

As far as my feelings, mine are more of gratitude, which means that I look for reasons to be happy and to be happy to help others.

Anyway, why the curiosity? Do you think that human thankfulness really only started with Abraham? Are the billions of people on this earth who don’t believe in a personal deity incapable of similar feelings?

I love Daniel Dennett’s 2006 essay on thanking “goodness,” not “gods.” It was written after he nearly died of a tear in his aorta. The whole thing is worth reading. Here are a couple germane passages:

Yes, I did have an epiphany. I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say “Thank goodness!” this is not merely a euphemism for “Thank God!” (We atheists don’t believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now.

…

The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God is that there really are lots of ways of repaying your debt to goodness—by setting out to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come. Goodness comes in many forms, not just medicine and science. Thank goodness for the music of, say, Randy Newman, which could not exist without all those wonderful pianos and recording studios, to say nothing of the musical contributions of every great composer from Bach through Wagner to Scott Joplin and the Beatles. Thank goodness for fresh drinking water in the tap, and food on our table. Thank goodness for fair elections and truthful journalism. If you want to express your gratitude to goodness, you can plant a tree, feed an orphan, buy books for schoolgirls in the Islamic world, or contribute in thousands of other ways to the manifest improvement of life on this planet now and in the near future.

The things I thank goodness for – health, financial means, education, employment, my family and friends – are in my life because I was fortunate enough to be born into them, smart enough to take advantage of them when I had the opportunity and persistent enough to pursue them against the odds. Rather than thanking a supernatural power for them, I prefer to translate my gratitude into action by making similar opportunities available to others in this world.

Soon after I became an atheist my parents came over for dinner. As we sat down at the table I said, “let’s just pause for a moment of thanks”. Surprised, they obediently bowed their heads and I proceeded to thank my wife for making such a great dinner and for the kids who helped out and set the table.

I agree with what other commentors are saying. When something bad randomly happens in my life I feel bad about it but I don’t blame the cosmos for my misfortune. And when good things happen I feel grateful, but that doesn’t mean some imaginary lackey in the sky arranged it all for me.

When I think about my life perhaps the word “content” better describes how I feel than “thankful”.

This is perhaps the one thing I have the biggest problem with when it comes to dialogue with the religious. They seem entirely incapable of conceptualizing atheism at its most basic level. “If you don’t thank God, who (or what) do you thank?” The religious believers cannot even conceive of a world in which there is no agency of some kind directing things. If I have enjoyed prosperity, or good health, or a happy home life, I do not thank the universe, or providence, or some other anthropomorphised imaginary entity, because that would be like thanking the invisible, fire-breathing dragon in my garage for heating my home, or thanking the blue fairies on the moon for changing the phases. It is possible to be generally thankful without having to direct that thanks at some thing or some one.

I’m Canadian, so thanksgiving for me was last month, but whatever I’ll bite.

What I’m thankful for is that I’m alive, that I live in a country where I enjoy a high standard of living, good healthcare, and excellent civil rights, I’m thankful that I have a loving family, an opportunity to get a good education, and plenty of opportunities to enjoy myself. I’m thankful I have the right, protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to believe whatever I feel is right, and to express those beliefs in a peaceful, non-harmful manner. So many people in the world are starving, lack proper healthcare, suffer under terribly abusive regimes, have no education, and are not free to believe what they want and worship (or not) as they choose and express their beliefs freely.

Who and what am I thankful too? I’m thankful to my dad, and my extended family for supporting me and loving me when I needed it, I’m thankful to my friends for being friends. I’m thankful to the cafeteria lady at college for taking the trouble to learn my name. I’m thankful to my lab partners for helping me out.

There are probably lots of people that I should be thankful to that I’ve forgotten all about, I’ve had a lot of challenges in my life, but when I think about how much worse it could be, I think I’m pretty well off all things concerned. And I credit my family for that mostly, and my teachers many of whom were very patient and kind with me, when I could be very trying at times.

I don’t feel “thankful” when something lucky happens to me, that would imply that the luck was planned by some intelligent agent, which I don’t believe. I’m happy when I get lucky, but that’s all. And when I get unlucky, it sucks, but I don’t go around blaming the universe for my bad luck, because that’s all it was, just bad luck and hopefully I’ll have better luck next time.

You, of course, beg the question: to whom or what are you unthankful to when things go just a tad south.

The Universe gives and the Universe takes, and the Universe flat out doesn’t care, so being thankful to it is pointless. And yet, that’s all there is.

Might I play devil’s advocate here. I do appreciate and respect Mike’s willingness to engage in discourse with atheists. I know we surely need to find common ground. However, this site’s name is the Friendly Atheist. I come here for (occasionally irreverent) atheist news and commentary. I don’t come here to gain a better understanding of Christians or engage in dialogue with them. Its nice to have a secluded site where one needn’t expound on one’s beliefs. Unfortunately with the inclusion of Mike as a blogger, that environment no longer exists.

Again this isn’t a personal attack on Mike, I just would prefer exclusively atheist bloggers on an atheist site. What does everyone else think?

1. I am thankful for the freedoms we have in America, though I certainly think there are ways in which we could be more free. And for a delightful dinner!

2. I am thankful to all the people who got Thanksgiving dinner to my table, including, but not limited to:
the farmers
the buyers who purchased the product
the people who shipped the product
the warehouse people who stored the product
the drivers who drove the product to the store
the grocers who processed and stocked and checked out the product

In addition, the scientists who work on perfecting soil and crops, the techitions working tirelessly on the perfect frozen pizza, the people fixing the roads to get that frozen pizza to me, the FDA, and Hugh Laurie, who I choose to believe is involved in the whole process.

Thanks, Hemant for this forum. Thanks Hemant and Mike for being interested and willing to engage different world views with the intent of bringing understanding instead of conversion. This is an action of peace in a world that often values division. Thanks to all respondents willing to share real thoughts.

I especially resonate with Richard Wade’s comment ” I consciously choose to feel thankful rather than just glad or lucky because thankfulness has a powerful humbling quality, and it puts my life into terms of gratitude. Luckiness leads me to arrogance. To feel grateful or thankful is to be rich.”

I have found personally that most of the good things that have happened to me are a direct result or byproduct of the generosity and self giving of other people in our own time and those before. For this I am thankful.

Ok i Will be the odd man out; interrupt this feel good and ruffle a feel feathers. I’m thankful for each knew day of life and for the many people who help make it worth living; for those who without pay labored to bring a wonderful dinner to the table, to the freedoms I’m allowed and to yes cocadoole due GOD. I know I’m answering a question directed specifically to atheists; but i couldn’t resist. Happy holidays.

I think that the new fad of going around and being thankful on Thanksgiving is kinda self-centered. Thanksgiving is about the pilgrims who gave thanks. Personally, I feel that I don’t have to right to stick myself into this holiday. The founders of our country, good or bad, gave thanks for surviving this long. That’s what it’s about. Not me. Thanksgiving is about families getting together to share in a feast with the under-current of history while sharing time together. That’s all. I don’t, “thank nature,” or anything ridiculous like that. If I’m going to thank anyone, it’ll be me for making sure I took advantage of opportunities and worked hard enough to be satisfied with my status quo.

First let me say it’s nice to see a person of faith with such an open mind; most of the religious folks we deal with seem to think our atheist family are Satan incarnate and Bad People because we don’t believe in a god. Now to answer the questions:
1. I’m thankful for everything I have at this time in my life, esp. after how I grew up and the bad decisions I made for so many years. My health, my family, my friends, even the fact that I just got to buy my first new car AND stop working to stay home.
2. Who am I thankful to? Without a doubt, my husband. He’s helped make several of my dreams come true, and I make sure he knows how I feel about him and about all he’s done for me.
I think an important part of being thankful for anything is making sure you don’t take it for granted.

Unbrainwashed, I totally agree with you. Mike is a nice liberal Xian and I have nothing against him. I’ve had some interesting conversations with him elsewhere and I enjoyed our dialogues. But a contributor to Friendly ATHEIST? Maybe Hemant needs to change the blog name if that’s the direction he wants to go. I don’t really see the value in having conversations such as this where a theist asks us to defend our views, on an atheist blog.

Unbrainwashed, did you even READ the book on which this blog is premised? The whole book is about going out and engaging and listening to religious people. If you only want to hear from atheists, then lock yourself in a room and lecture a mirror. Otherwise, what’s more friendly than a nice cordial dialog?

The vast majority of blogs are boring enough as echo chambers. It’s not like Mike is running the site: he’s contributing stuff that others respond to. How the heck is that different than Hemant posting his words indirectly and having us respond or talk with him as a commenter?

How odd that you should ask! Our Thanksgiving column at The Eloquent Atheist on this subject, “A Secular Thanksgiving,” was extremely popular. You can find it at:

http://www.eloquentatheist.com/?p=117

I think it is the most StumbleUpon thumbs up we have ever had on a single page. I must say, however, that I was surprised by the number of people that thought Thanksgiving was a secular holiday. I wonder who they thought was originally being thanked? ;o)

Michael

I agree with Mriana and Bad, except that the blog’s name Friendly Atheist makes all the more sense by having Mike contribute. The name would mean nothing if we didn’t engage with theists and at least try to keep the conversation civil. If we’re only friendly with other atheists then so what? With no one but atheists contributing this site could become insular and self-congratulatory, ironically a quality that Duncan finds undesirable in atheists, even as he objects to dialogue that could prevent it.

Hemant named the site such because of the pervasive and sadly well earned expectation that atheists are not friendly to theists, and he wanted to change that. Check out the link to “Off the Map” where the good-natured dialogue between Mike O., another Christian pastor and Siamang, a contributor there is of high quality and always interesting.

If you want a mutual agreement society the best thing to do is stay at home and talk to yourself. And you can go be “friendly” with yourself while you’re at it.

Thank goodness for fair elections and truthful journalism.

I would, if such mythical entities actually existed. 😉

I am curious, though, and forgive me for asking but… Mike, why are you here in the first place? What is your motivation for sticking around and now agreeing to be one of the authors? What is your agenda? Don’t say you don’t have one, because everyone has an agenda if you are really willing to be honest. From the looks of it, it’s not that you have an abundance amount of time to waste. What do you hope to accomplish? And why this particular blog?

I’m here because I enjoy good discussions, I like getting glimpses of how other people view the world, and I like having my own beliefs tested. As I said, my own beliefs have been refined and improved because of the conversations I’ve had here over the past year. I gain insight and good questions from them that force me to rethink aspects of my own worldview. That is valuable to me.

I’m at this particular blog because Hemant is a friend of mine. He came to our church as part of his original eBay atheist project and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. I joined in the conversation on the original eBay Atheist blog, migrated to the Off the Map message boards, and have currently landed here. I have found his insights about churches helpful and appreciate the overall attitude with which he engages Christians about his own beliefs.

And you’re right that I probably don’t have the time to spend here, but hey, what can I say? I’m an internet addict. 😉

Jeff,

Not to step on Mike’s toes, but I can help with this question a little.

I don’t ascribe to it, but I highly respect those who do and I’ve mentioned them several times on Hemant’s blog- Sea of Faith, Freeman, Spong, Cupitt, Borg, and others all have non-theistic beliefs, yet have a philosophical X-ianity called non-realism. You can check it out here: http://www.sofn.org.uk/ , read Anthony Freeman’s book called “God in Us: A Case for Christian Humanism”, any of Spong or Cupitt’s books… Even on the website god is unreal.

You would have to really study it to understand it, but it’s almost like the Unitarian concept.

The reason why I don’t ascribe to it, is I don’t know why non-theists/Humanists would use non-realism. I understand Religious Humanist (like Bob Price) far better. They don’t believe, but they can enjoy the worship service or read the Bible, as mythology, even so. Although, I see his point with Don Cupitt in this article and I can complete agree with what Bob says: http://secularhumanism.org/library/fi/price_22_3.htm Regardless, it’s all a human concept. Ironically, Bob and I are on the same wavelength, but Spong and I are not, yet we get along even so.

Anyway, those are some examples to answer what you are asking. So, to the Sea of Faithers and alike, no, Christianity is not meaningless without the “saved” concept nor is it meaningless without the heaven and hell concepts. It’s not even meaningless without the God concept.

I’m not a SoF person, I understand them, but I don’t ascribe to it. Price is more my speed. 😆

Can Christianity reach out to people who are not going to (ever) believe that accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior is the ONLY way to avoid going to hell? Could there be such a thing as Christianity without the heaven/hell/saved component? Or is Christianity meaningless without the “saved” concept?

Good question Jeff! I’d like to think that we can reach out, since I personally don’t think that “salvation” primarily has to do with the whole “heaven/hell” thing. Being “saved”, IMHO, doesn’t primarily mean “being saved from Hell”. Being saved, again IMHO (which a friend once suggested should stand for “In My Heretical Opinion” 🙂 ), means God’s action to rescue us from the personal and systemic evils and injustices that we humans are so good at inflicting on ourselves first and foremost in the here and now. And since I think God desires to rescue all people, not just people who believe he exists or who believe in his “rescue”, I think that “salvation” is something that can still bring “blessing” to those who will never “accept Jesus”. For instance, if Jesus’ followers were to actually do what he said and really start loving others as ourselves in ways that genuinely made their lives better, then that would bless those people even if they never agreed with our beliefs.

But this is rather off-topic from my original post, so I probably shouldn’t get too deep into it. 🙂

Mike,

I hope to get more into this in a future post dedicated to this topic. I think it would find lots of traction with lots of people. In my heretical opinion, the salvation of Christianity itself will be with dropping all notions of an afterlife. And where being “saved”, as you say, will all be about the here and now. Then it would actually mean something for people like me. We would still disagree as to whether “it” comes from God or from an agreed upon good psychology, but our outward behavior would be the same. That would be a blessing 😉

Jeff

No, it was I who said the Sea of Faith doesn’t believe in an afterlife- or something to that affect.

I’m not deploring Mike’s willingness to engage in friendly discourse. Read my original post – I say nothing antagonistic, rather, I even compliment Mike for being open. I believe most of the responses to my original post have not read my actual post and just imagined that I mirrored the angry atheist stereotype. Instead, I merely stated that having a Christian blogger on a website about atheism is not a welcome addition. There are plenty of forums and websites that encourage this type of discourse. I had imagined that the Friendly Atheist was a site to espouse atheistic views in a genial manner. A Christian blogger is only necessary if one’s motivation is understanding rather than a place for news and commentary.

The Unbrainwashed, I went back and re-read your first comment, and I don’t understand a few things:

I come here for (occasionally irreverent) atheist news and commentary. I don’t come here to gain a better understanding of Christians or engage in dialogue with them.

There is news and commentary and there is also dialogue attempting better understanding. What the site offers is not limited to what you come here for. I come here for both. These two main categories have been important aspects since Hemant started this site. The four earliest content postings back in June 2006 are entitled,
“Dialogue at Parkview Christian Church”
“Creationism for my Child’s Teacher”
“Pastor Tim’s Response”
“Obama, Alabama, Etc.”
So the first one is a dialoge with a Christian pastor, the second is a controversial issue, the third, another dialogue with a Chirstian pastor and the fourth is about religion in politics.

Its nice to have a secluded site where one needn’t expound on one’s beliefs. Unfortunately with the inclusion of Mike as a blogger, that environment no longer exists.

Secluded? Last time I looked the door was wide open and hundreds of Christians of all makes and models have been coming in here, some preaching like biblebots, some being snide and superior, some just curious and open-hearted, and some very knowledgeable and respectful, with interesting angles on issues that I at least would never have considered.

Take the question that Mike has asked on this post. I’m sure that neither Hemant nor I would have ever asked such a question, but it has generated a very interesting and uplifting series of comments.

Unbrainwashed, you always speak to Mike C with respect and you seem to enjoy the exchanges, so I don’t understand why his being a contributor spoils this site for you. The site is more than what you have described, although you have participated in positive ways in all of its various activities.

Just as Mike says this challenging interaction clarifies his views and makes him a better Christian, it makes me a better atheist.

“That’s selfish and self-centered too.”

To say that I’m glad that I got off my butt and did something with myself when I could have wallowed in laziness? Yeah, ok, I’m a selfish pig. At least I’m not trying to make a historical holiday all about me, which is the point you missed. Not only am I selfish (your definition, not mine), I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. I worked damn hard and came from a life a squalor with no help from anyone, so yeah, proud and selfish, LOL LOL LOL

K, surely there was someone who gave you a boost along the way.

Writerdd, where did Mike give a X-ian commentary? He explained his reason why he asked, but I saw no commentary. Nor did he preach anything.

Writerdd, I didn’t realize you were so allergic to interactions with Christians.

Oh dear! I hope she’s not a vampire. 😆 (I’m just teasing, writerdd.)

I’ve already promised not to preach at you guys or go on about Christian doctrine.

Either she hasn’t seen all your previous posts or she has been hurt so badly that it takes her a lot longer to trust those who are religious. It took me a few years and I still sit back and watch before I say anything.

Has there ever been a religion where the central premise (for an afterlife) is that the only people admitted are the righteous that sincerely don’t believe in an afterlife?

No, but I have a Christian universalist friend who thinks that everyone immediately goes to heaven except Christian exclusivists who think anyone who doesn’t believe exactly like them goes to hell. 🙂 (Though he would say that even they get to go to heaven eventually… after a few years in “purgatory”.)

It would even be nice to have all the teachings of Jesus, just without the corrupting eternal salvation…

See, that’s just it, I don’t think Jesus actually did talk much about “eternal salvation” in the sense of an afterlife – especially when you realize that phrases that he did use, like “eternal life” is better translated as “life of the ages” and has more to do with a quality of life in the here and now, rather than an extension of life in the hereafter. (Likewise with the phrase “kingdom of heaven”.)

Clawson,

I applaud your seeming fearlessness in posting here. I guess you were invited to do so. You seem to pose some interesting questions on thankfulness. As I had been a religious person for several years, I know that your ‘thankfulness’ or ‘gratitude’ question is a type of trap. You’ll probably deny that, but that’s okay. I’ll allow you to play that game. As an atheist, I’m freed from the trap that you’ve set; yet, the irony is that you’re caught in it yourself and you’re completely blind to it. I invite you to free yourself, join us, the atheists–we have love, we have life, we have humor, goodness. I have a sense that you’re headed our way.

Religious gratitude, though often posed in a very innocent-sounding manner, is no more than a kind of groveling, prostrating sentiment deeply rooted in guilt. Guilt? Yes, guilt. As a religious person, you are taught to feel guilty (guilty gratitude) via and through what you know as the cross with it’s attendant denotations of death and suffering. Suffering and guilt, the sado-masochistic twins, underlie expressions of thankfulness for many believers. Though I hesitate to blanket all believers with the same statement. Sometimes, there can be a kind of transcendence, beyond scripture that is almost universal in its outreach. Clawson, you show up with your somewhat pompous pseudo-spiritual yammering about thankfulness. Of course, you probably believe it’s assumed that you are the scion of thankfulness since you believe yourself to be a . . . what was it? . . . a pastor? Careful, the sheep are ON TO YOU. At some level, they know they’re already free without doctrine.

I imagine that you might respond this way: “But you did not answer my question, just what is an atheist thankful for?” Okay, but I warn you that I don’t traffic in guilt or in trying to hammer confessions of the same from humankind. Generally, people have enough issues, I think. I am mindful that each day for me is a new day, one of discovery, from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same. I see my family, other persons, woodland creatures, feel the sun on my skin, breathe relatively clean air and say, “It’s great to be alive, it’s great to be human.” I’m free to feel true compassion, to respectfully exist upon the earth. I love the earth, I belong to it. Clawson, do you like the earth? Some atheists might even venture that they feel whole, they are the measure of their existence, therefore they are free–truly free–to be, to create, to go beyond groveling THANKFULNESS, free to GROW UP into true APPRECIATION for themselves, for life, for others. When I was religious, I could not appreciate anything; all things were held suspect, divided between good and evil. As an atheist, I’m not pummeled with guilt from a steady dose of doctrine; therefore, I don’t feel forced to pretend that I HAVE to FEEL Thankful. A religionist will often draw upon the thankfulness card time and again (irrespective of whether or not he or she is actually thankful), even though he or she knows that beneath it lies a cauldron of smoldering guilt. At least, I can be natural about it.

Be free.

Dina S.,

You are so wrong on so many levels, I don’t even know where to begin. Mike never claimed that he was “religious.” I don’t know where you have been or how you have been hurt by religious leaders; but I assure you, not all Christians are alike nor do we deny you your right to hate religion. I have been hurt by those in leadership as well, but I have been very fortunate to find and be nurtured by a fellowship who follow the true voice of Christ, which gives us true freedom. Freedom in the truth.

You say “Be free.” But are you truly free? If you were, you would not still be holding onto that pain that is so apparent in your writing. True freedom brings us to forgiveness and love.

What about things like good health, fortunate financial circumstances, life and liberty and happiness, etc.?

You correctly identify one of the major causes in your question – fortune. When one has good fortune, such as fortunate circumstances, it’s luck. To the extent that these things are luck, I am glad to be lucky. You can think of that gladness as thankfulness (I often do) without really meaning anything more than appreciation of one’s undeserved circumstances, just as I would be if I won a dollar on the toss of a coin (even were I still inclined to believe as I did as a child, I would not expect that the hand of God would be involved in so pathetic a circumstance as the toss of a coin for a dollar, but merely to happenstance – nowadays, with my better understanding of probability, I extend the class of things I attribute to happenstance).

Of course, it’s not entirely luck – to the extent that my good health is due to the care of my (atheist) physician, I am grateful to him, and to the several physicians I had before. To the extent that it’s caused by the modern understanding of the need for sanitation and nutrition, I am grateful to people like Snow (the guy that figured out that the Broad St pump handle should be removed) and those that followed. And so on.

In other words, I am grateful to anyone that had a hand in my good circumstances, and for the rest, I am happy for my good fortune. One the other hand, I don’t need to wonder at the cause for my bad fortune, either.

Nicholas I’m sorry if I offended you. From your comment however, it really appears that you’ve misinterpreted my intent. I apologize for miscommunicating. Please allow me to clarify.

You said:

Yet, your statement was ended with: “Or does it even make sense for an atheist to be “thankful” for such things? Perhaps you should simply feel “glad” but not “thankful” per se.”

I suggest to you that by posing what was clearly intended to be a rhetorical question, you added a sermon to your query. The implication that I unfortuantely read was that, in order to feel gratitude for what one has in life, one must be directly grateful to someone or something. Because we lack a divine being to be thankful to, it is surprising or odd that we can feel gratitude. But “being thankful” is no more a Christian thought than “being compassionate” is a Bhuddist thought or “being jolly” is a heavy drinker’s thought.

First off, it was not at all a rhetorical question. I was not stating that as my opinion; I was simply throwing out one possible response that someone might give. And since many of the atheists here have said exactly that (i.e. that they “feel glad but not thankful”) I assume it wasn’t exactly an offensive suggestion.

Secondly, I never said nor meant to imply that it is odd for atheists to feel thankful. And I never said nor meant to imply that gratitude is an exclusively Christian trait. I feel like you are reading a hostile intent into my words that was not there. You have interpreted my question as “Because [atheists] lack a divine being to be thankful to, it is surprising or odd that [you] can feel gratitude.” But that was not what I meant. What I meant was simply that all people feel gratitude (nothing surprising or odd about that), but that the way we use the word “gratitude” in the English language very often seems to imply an object or recipient of that gratitude. So it doesn’t seem like it should be strange or offensive for me to wonder who atheists are grateful to. As we’ve seen, some (like yourself) have suggested that “gratitude” doesn’t need a recipient, and others agreed that “glad” is a better term for the emotion than “thankfulness”. Both seem like reasonable answers to me, and I don’t see why either perspective ought to be considered offensive. Personally I didn’t suggest that I agreed with one or the other, or that one or the other was “right” or “wrong”. I simply asked the question because I was curious how others might respond.

Ultimately, I believe you wanted to simply ask, “It’s Thanksgiving; what are you thankful for?” You added the fact that we didn’t believe what you did, which implied that you couldn’t understand us because we were somehow “wrong”. And from what I’ve read from you, I doubt that’s the case.

You’re right to doubt because that’s not what I was implying. I never said anyone was “wrong”. My question had nothing to do with right or wrong answers. I simply wanted to “try on a different set of lenses”, as it were. I look at the world through theist lenses. Others here look through atheist lenses. I know what gratitude looks like through a theist lens, but I wanted to know what it looks like through the atheist lens. They’re not right or wrong, IMHO, they’re just different – and I enjoy understanding differences.

I hope that clarifies. Again, I apologize for miscommunicating.

What a fantastic Blog.
I think this list of thanks is fantastic.

I’m sort of out of my territory here. Im from the UK (The Midlands in England – Birmingham to be exact)
I’m thankful for sites like this – and although I have many reason for that, i’ll give you two.

1) Because being an Atheist is very lonely. I appreciate that there are many of us (The UK has a very high %pro-rata) but we aren’t drawn together in a “common cause”. Being an Atheist isn’t something that naturally brings people together.I mean what would a room full of Atheists talk about, we don’t neccassarily have anything else in common.
Atheist Humanitarianism groups in the UK do a reasonable job, but worldwide, the more exposure the better.

2)Engaging Theists in a rational discourse. Answering politely when they ask civil question. Offering no aggressive “Evangelical Atheist” diatribe either.

In other words being honest, open and human. Humility and respect simply because we genuinely respect the right of people to believe – with the caveat that they should reciprocate.

I was sorry to read from one poster that he did not come here to speak with theists. For me open and honest discourse is wonderful (oh how I wish a god DID exist, esspecially for my childrens sake) and if I’m given proper proof one day that he is, then I will convert in an instant.
Though I am more certain that that WON’T happen than just about anything else.

So finally I’m thankful for my friends and family (many of whom are theists) – whom I love dearly.

My thoughts to you all in the US. We know how much tougher it is over there to be openly Atheist. Keep the flame of science and rationality burning.