Gratitude Without God (grace, America, atheist, quote)
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I have never really thought about this. When you don't believe there is something out there (God, Goddess, Spirit), you can still be grateful, but is it the same? I am trying to remember what I would think about when I was an atheist and was grateful for certain circumstances, but I can't remember now.
This is why secular, Thanksgiving-flavored gratitude seems so fuzzy. Religions from Christianity to Hinduism to Wicca all emphasize the importance of thankfulness, especially as a form of prayer. This is because they rely on the premise of an other, some sort of non-human being that has some sort of control or influence in the world who you can thank for the world and the good things in it.
I thought this would be something interesting to discuss especially since Thanksgiving is today and so many people are talking about giving thanks.
ETA: I hope this is an appropriate article for the religion section of the forum.
Thankfulness - is a positive outlook on your situation. Feeling good about how things turned out. You could
thank your lucky stars so to speak or just count your blessings. It's a good practice. There is no need to thank someone else (like a deity)
Although it may be a more powerful feeling when you believe that someone has helped you (and you are thanking them) rather than just contemplating that things turned out well and you feel good about it.
One cannot be thankful to a deity without also holding that deity accountable for all the crappy things that have happened in your life.
This dichotomy is one of the reasons why I'm glad to be an atheist. I don't have to play that stupid game whereby the deity only causes good things to happen whilst the lousy things were of our own doing.
Rubbish.
Because the deity is STILL responsible for all of the times in your life when you really needed a good thing to happen - and nothing good materialized. Withholding good things is the same thing as causing something bad to happen.
Well, the good and the bad cancel each other out thus removing any real feeling of "thankfulness."
Why yes, God, I'm so glad that you filled my plate up with food but that doesn't change the fact that you really screwed me with this whole neuropathy thing, ya know?
I would much rather be thankful for the friends that have helped me along, the family who kept me going - in fact, I'm thankful for all of you folks who keep coming here day after day and keeping the discussions and debates going. No deity did that ... YOU did that.
This idea of thanking deities takes all the focus away from the people who actually DID do things to make your life good and instead turns all the attention to some invisible, unproven, faceless entity who somehow receives all the credit. Yeah, because magic spells and hocus pocus deserve more accolades than your best friend seated to your right and your parents (or whomever) seated to your left. They didn't do a damn thing. It was all because of that deity.
We atheists tend to thank the people who really matter, the people who have given us emotional, financial, and moral support throughout the years - not some Hebrew tribal god that has no business at the dinner table of a 21st Century American family.
This thankfulness issue is on the mind, of course, because of this holiday.
I was trying to think of what to be thankful to...not for... to replace the usual saying of Grace and the thanks to god.
Other than substituting 'fate', anything else got too lengthy if being factual is an issue.
It could be a longer list than some Oscar winner's speeches or the acknowledgement section in some books.
If there is anything good happening in your life you can be grateful concerning it whether or not a deity is at the bottom of it. I am grateful to my wife, for the good things she brings to my life. To society, my community, my culture, my profession, and a bunch of other people, organizations and constructs.
Some of us are also grateful that we won the lottery such that we are able to participate in the relatively rare experience of being sentient, self-aware, conscious beings, and for anyone in the West, at least, we can be thankful to experience that in the wealthiest and most technologically advanced era known to humanity.
What on earth does a deity have to do with feeling positive, grateful, or thankful about anything? At best, all it does is misdirect our gratitude. Like the people who thank god for healing them, giving short shrift to their physicians and health care givers, the support of family, and the fortunate physical characteristics and genes that they inherited.
I agree with Ashley. It makes sense to be grateful to the person who cooked your Thanksgiving dinner, or did something nice for you, but it makes no sense to be grateful to something that doesn't exist, or to something that is doing nothing more than its nature (like a tree for providing shade). The entity you're thanking doesn't have to be god, but it has to be something that has a choice of what to do and is doing something in order to confer a benefit on you.
For many years I attended a family Thanksgiving dinner where one of the activities was to say what we were thankful for, and I would always challenge the assumption underlying the question. It's the same reason I don't like to give toasts.
If there is anything good happening in your life you can be grateful concerning it whether or not a deity is at the bottom of it. I am grateful to my wife, for the good things she brings to my life. To society, my community, my culture, my profession, and a bunch of other people, organizations and constructs.
Exactly. It's possible to be grateful to the people who have actually done something for you to be grateful for. Directly.
I am grateful to my best friend for loving me and always being there. I am grateful to my boss for agreeing to take me on full-time. I'm grateful to my children for being kind to one another, for being fascinating and fun and adding so much to my life. I'm grateful when I hear about people who are trying to make positive changes in the world.
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