No invisible means of support: life challenges and the atheistic worldview

Abstract

Atheism is now a prominent belief system within Aotearoa (New Zealand) (Gendall & Healey, 2009) and its prevalence in our country calls attention to the need for a better understanding of this worldview. A worldview provides a descriptive model of the world we live in and is considered to be the fundamental cognitive orientation of any individual (Palmer, 1996). My research examined a largely unexplored area of enquiry – the life-world of atheists in Christchurch, New Zealand, with the aim of achieving a better understanding of the ways in which atheists face, and attempt to overcome, a range of challenges. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first Christchurch-based study on atheism. Through the use of semi-structured, in-depth interviews, my exploratory study provides rich descriptions of the personal reflections of 12 Christchurch-based atheists in academic settings. Consistent with previous work (Baggini, 2003; Harding, 2007;Ysseldyk, 2010; Michell, 2009), all of the atheists in my sample identified themselves as naturalistic materialists, repudiated belief in an afterlife, did not practice spiritual activities and did not see purpose built into a universe made entirely of matter-energy. These atheists provide themselves with alternative means of comfort in the absence of supernatural belief and expressed no desire for theistic explanations of currently unexplained phenomena; they preferred a world in which things went unexplained, and viewed the converse as boring. With the exception of two participants, all of those interviewed indicated that apostasy and the shift from theistic belief to positive atheism began in their adolescence, often lasted in excess of ten years and included a significant period of agnosticism. Many of the participants refuted the “Divine Command” theory and provided alternative justifications for their own moral standards. Generally, like previous work (Caldwell-Harris, Wilson, & Beit-Hallahmi, 2010; Vetter & Green, 1932) my research suggests that the atheistic worldview has been adopted for logical reasons. However, considering some of the results from my research, I also acknowledge the possibility of emotionally-charged psychological influences in the formation and dismantling of worldviews. Whatever the reasons why participants adopted their atheistic worldviews, their new interpretations of the world changed how they felt about and how they reacted to life challenges. Hence, once adopted, not only did their worldviews provide “both a sketch of and a blueprint for reality; describing what they saw and stipulating what they should see,” (Olthuis, 1985, p. 29) but feelings and reactions towards events also changed accordingly.