I've got a spare 5 mins and I want to write this. I've often heard that in a person's darkest hours everyone believes or prays, I've never agreed or thought it likely but could hardly argue that I KNEW it not to be the case - I can now.
I adore my hubby, it's a right soft love story but that's not for now, for now is to say that 2 nights waiting for him to die was the hardest thing I could imagine aside from it being our daughter. I waited in so many empty rooms, day rooms with old people's chairs, on a trolly in a side room, next to David while he slept, in the corridor, or waiting again in a relatives room with tissues on the table. I know some people, maybe even most would have dealt with it differently but I knew he was dying, I knew something might change and save him but until it did his body, he, was dying and either I faced it or I'd fall to pieces which we both promised not to do because we have a child.
When it was really silent my thoughts didn't scratch around for a super being to save us or even a super anti biotic just to understand what was happening to us. This was what I thought about it instead. Life and death is a job lot, no one without the other, no David with David's death, no me without mine and I STILL love life, I still love that he found me after 10 years, I still love being his wife - even in that moment. It wasn't a tradgedy - the tsunami was a tradgedy, all those kids left without any parents, people losing whole families, the descent of countries into war. This was a death but not a tradgedy, it was part of life not outside of it, it was a bug fighting a man while doctors fought the bug. There's no reason for it to happen to someone else not us, nor would it be any less sad and it does happen to hundreds of people every day. I love him but if I lost him I wouldn't wish him away so how can it truly be tragic?
After the first night his family arrived from Cumbria, they were glad to have arrived in time and I watched as we all waited. For them it was so different, they had to wrangle with justice or injustice, anger, and a deeper harder sense of wrong - because their belief is so engrained (not really religious but believers) each happening was either a personal favour or a personal slight, each thing in their eyes was 'done to David'. That path was harder than mine and if he'd died I don't know where it would have ended for them except I know they're own suffering and effort would be bigger than what I faced. In their eyes I think I was a little cold, but not in David's he knows me.
So in the darkest hour I could rest aside from dealing with what was happening, I never felt even the slightest draw towards faith - quite the opposite.
I just wanted to write that before I forgot!
Many thanks from me for making that so-personal post. You know that you have the support of many members here - sorry I have not posted, but I have followed the thread.
Sincere best wishes to you and David.
Im not at all good with "touchy feely" stuff, but I do sympathise with your plight. I do hope David recovers, and if it is already too late, then I hope you do. Sorry if I seem a tad insensitive, but I just dont know what else to say given that this is so enormously personal for you. I would like to thank you for sharing though, they do say a problem shared is a problem halved.
I really don't know what I should say about David (without seeming insensetive or just pain stupid)... so I won't say anything.
Instead I want to say that, a crisis actually can make you wish that there really was a god but it cannot make you BELIEVE that there is one.
Bugger!! I should have added on the end here that he IS on the mend, I knew I'd written it in another thread so didn't think. It was s real as a thing can get while it was happening but it did pass.
I didn't wish there was a god at all, I think part of me wondered if I would but I didn't because even with all it's dark bits I love life and I don't want to go through what I see people going through that do believe in god. I know that believers acheive the mental acrobatics to carry on believing but it takes much less energy to not have to bother and I needed all the energy I could save.
Floppit, wonderful news!! Presumably another score for medical science?
The question of people reaching for a god in times of crisis is fascinating. Why would anyone believe that their god would save them or their loved ones when that god allows so much other suffering of innocents. One hears and reads all the time of people pleading "I promise I will always believe in you and serve you if only you deliver me/mine."
One can understand that people want hope but surely the evidence is clearly there that even if some god or gods do exist they don't give a toss.
I think that that is a very good and important point.Originally Posted by newatheist
It's something that religionists often fail to understand. They often argue in favour of believing in a god because they think that things would be better if there was a god.
Great news indeed ... but in the interests of balance, if he was on Vancomycin it is almost certain that the bug he was suffering from had evolved because of medical science's indiscriminate use of antibiotics in the past.
This is something that makes me worry that we are taking the wrong approach with trying to get some sense into these people. It is not that they see any objective reason for believing what they do, but that they lack any concept of objective evidence at all. If someone says "I believe this because the world would be a better place if it were true", where does one begin in trying to present an alternative point of view? Do we have to convince them that the world is a better place without a god, and forget about the issue of whether there actually is a god or not?
There are issues re the resilience of bugs - ones which were faced in a very personal way because the few remaining effective antibiotics aren't given unless lab results show they DEFINATELY kill all of a particular bug, that risks individual life but ultimately will save many more. I could and did accept that, although it was a friend rather than the medical proffession that truly laid it on the line how it works.
I watched people who believe in god deal with the same events and they did so with alot of questions about why - I didn't have to invest my feelings in that which was one hell of a relief! From past experience I think it ultimately winds up a circular argument - if you believe in god then with that you trust each thing is decided by that god and that god not you knows best so you may not figure out why but that's your own fault. I couldn't live like that - I know the saying 'Thy will, not mine, be done' and I understand without it faith would fail but the mental effort and disempowerment of it disturbs me. In that situation I knew what my will could decide, how a dealt with it day by day, my resolve to keep what may be left of our family thriving, staying with David so he wouldn't go through it alone, and trying to be considerate to the rest of his family. I also knew what my will could not do - save him or make him better. That meant I only had to invest in what I could do.
Of course, there's blame - his mother said when her brother in law died after a crash what saved her faith was knowing people not god built cars. That would never work for me because there's more to a crash than cars and accidental death existed long before the automobile, but hey ho, her choice. If david had died maybe she'd have blamed the ambulance that didn't take him to hospital, orr the doctor who spoke to him over the phone rather than visit, or NHS direct who told him to see his GP on monday (the early hours of which even in hospital and on antibiotics he ended up being resuscitated!). I may have offered some feedback to the doctor out of those three, because the others were understandable mistakes, even if potentially fatal, where as the ambulance left with the belief a doctor would SEE him and that didn't happen.
I wrote the OP because while I think we all get to hear how religious folk see this stuff I never heard how someone without religion did - except that myth 'everyone prays'. What surprised me, because I had never thought about it before rather than it being unlikely, was how much more peaceful I could be through what was happening, how much easier it was and how many emotional places I just didn't have to go to.
All that said, while what I believe about life death and science helped me think about it - NOTHING touched the fear. I lost all my baby weight in 3 days, I couldn't stop the nausea and desperate feelings of fear, I don't know how or from where I would have got the energy on top of that to have to figure it as just or to feel it was cause by a cognizant being with ultimate power - there was too much pain in what I was watching to contemplate that.
Medical science isn't perfect but it's one hell of a start. Bugs and people are in a race but that's always been the case, just that we understand it more now than we did but not as much as we will.
First post on this site- Hello peopleBorn-again Christian for the past 26 years here.
Wow- you expressed your thoughts and feelings beautifully clearly..lovely to read..thanks..and so glad to read later that he's on the mend.
That was a great post, Floppit, and I'm delighted to hear that your husband is on the mend. I found the same thing when my parents died, and had less trouble than relatives with faith over issues, as you say, of justice or injustice, anger, and sense of wrong. As you say, too, fear and pain are enough to deal with!
There was an interesting article in the BBC news website recently about something very similar. Off the top of my head I can't remember exactly the detail, but I think it reflected the greater difficulties believers had with the concept of their own death, and how they were more desperate for any measures to increase the possibility of prolonging life. Ironic, rather.
Once again, I'm really glad to hear your husband is improving. Long may it continue.
I saw that as well. It seems that despite what they say when alive, these people are more afraid of what will happen to their souls after death than they are looking forward to a happy time. After all, anyone other than a saint is still scheduled for about a thousand years of moderate torture by our all-loving God before even coming up for trial. Makes 42 days of detention look a bit tame, really. Those of us who know we will just cease to exist at death are the ones who have it easy.
I do feel that the whole religious idea of going to heaven or hell after death is actually quite patronising.
Death is a part of everything, and for me, the grieving period is much better, and healthier, knowing that that is it. Knowing that the lost person is now in the ground or in an urn or whatever is definitely more painful than thinking they are with a deity where you will be able to see them again, but, in my view, just saying they are with god is not enough.
They say there are all these stories of Darwin, Einstein and even Carl Sagan declaring a belief in god on their deathbeds, but i would wonder, in their dying moments, if believers realised that their life is over and there is nothing afterwards and "converted" to atheism or being a non believer.
That is great news that your husband is improving, Floppit.
Actually I think you're quite wrong, there are quite a few successful religious scientists in the world, which means that there are at least some religious people who understand the concept of objective evidence.
I think compartmentalised thinking is a more plausible explanation, just using objective evidence during work or "evidence and reason does not apply to religion therefore I don't need evidence to believe in god."
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