On being an atheist diagnosed with MS

[rug]

Yes, I sat in the car and cried. But why should it not happen to me? There's no rage, as I've no sense I was selected for this

Peter Thompson
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 May 2012 06.57 EDT

It was pretty well exactly at this time last year, in the middle of writing the sixth of my columns on Marx for Comment is free that I had to take a quick break and go and get the results of an MRI scan from the doctor. Thinking it would just show that the prolapsed disc that I had to have removed 20 years ago was giving me some problems, I was actually left floundering when the doctor read the report, handed it over to me and explained that in fact I had multiple sclerosis. All of those weird symptoms that I had put down to stress, overwork, RSI, the prolapsed disc and all sorts of other things suddenly fell into place. But at the same time everything else fell out of place. Having read more times than I care to remember the cliches about people being poleaxed or speechless it was now my turn to stay silent.

I sat in the car outside and cried. I mean, I had always known that I was going to die, but now I knew I was going to die, and there is a real difference between those two things. Two short words from the doctor turned the theory into reality and I went through several of the stages of grief within the space of about 10 minutes: shock, disbelief, anger, despair, resolve. But like the MS (so far) I seem to have had a rather mild version of grief. If people have been discussing recently whether a true Christian can get depressed then I think for me the same question applies to a true atheist. After all, what is there to get depressed about? Rather than ask "why me?" the real question is, well, why not me? Death has to be put into its philosophical context and for me that starts with Heidegger's Sum Moribundus (being towards death): I die therefore I am. The only certainty in life is death. Sod taxes, they can be avoided, death can't.
Also, there is no anger because I do not have any sense of having been selected for this. Life is a series of contingent events thrown at us and out of which we have to make a convincing narrative for ourselves as individuals and collectively. This narrative is what I call a "metaphysics of contingency" and it is at the root not just of religious thinking, but also of all the ways in which we try to create meaning within a meaningless and non-directed existence. Religion, culture, politics, theology, philosophy in all its wonderful forms is, when it comes down to it, nothing more than a rage against death. As Nietzsche points out, we are nothing but clever animals who think they have invented knowledge. One day, billions of years hence, the sun will expand and "the clever animals will have to die". When I occasionally visit a religious service, what always strikes me is the vehemence of the rage against this recognition of entropy and death, the hope in the light of salvation.

For an atheist and a happy and optimistic nihilist like me, who doesn't mind that there is no point to any of this, that it just is, something like this just lines up in the queue with all of the other contingent events that confront us. For me it is the absence of salvation that is our great hope, because it is the absence that creates the salvation and makes me realise that it is down to us to find it, just as it is the very non-existence of God that forces us to invent him. Maybe Ernst Bloch and Jürgen Moltmann were right when they said that only an atheist can be a good Christian and only a Christian can be a good atheist.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/may/03/atheist-diagnosed-ms-peter-thompson?newsfeed=true

[cbayer]

1. I think he's in denial about feeling depressed.

This article made me feel depressed.

[Goblinmonger]

2. I have not experienced anything like what is posted in the OP

but I can completely understand and agree with what is being written. I have gone through some crap in my life (again, not to the level of being told I would die in X number of months) and have had this attitude and was not in denial about depression. Shit happens. Sometimes really bad shit happens to me. My test is not if I have done something that gets me a reward after I die, but how I react to things right now. I can be a douche (which I have been at times even to people I love) or I can keep moving forward and make a difference.

[cbayer]

3. I agree with you about how bad shit happens and I also am not

concerned about the bad or good things I have done.

But I just felt a hollowness in reading this. Perhaps he just exhibiting a stiff upper lip kind of mentality. I am not really sure that his views on religion are even important here.

He just seems sad.

[dmallind]

5. Crap. I'm in the same boat and then some - am I depressed?

Not everybody turns into a maudlin whiny wreck when they know the inevitable end that comes for all (and which only toddlers and the insane have excuses not to have absorbed long before that news ever comes) is coming sooner than expected.

[cbayer]

7. Feeling depressed is not the equivalent of turning into a maudlin whiny wreck.

I am sorry for your troubles and hope that you are not suffering.

The stages of grief described by Kubler-Ross have held up pretty well. IMO, they apply to both losing others and losing one's own life. I also don't think they vary all that much between religious and non-religious people.

The only point I was trying to make is that this man's writing conveyed a deep sadness to me, which he denies. I could be completely off base, though.

[dmallind]

9. the stages of grief are not mandatory or immutable across all cases

but no, I too highly doubt there is much of a difference between religious and non as far as applicability or duration goes across an aggregate population. Either of us can be wrong but I see neither sadness nor hollowness in his words, which match my own experience pretty closely (and which includes little of either too). He seems perfectly well adjusted to his bad news, which certainly is nothing more than a contingency, and to his likely demise, which is an inescapable contingency of life.

I'm not suffering much yet btw beyond very narrow exertion limits, but am on borrowed time and have been for a while. I'm the world's lousiest editor of logorrhoea but if I could distill what I read into his words, and what I definitely believe about my own similar situation into one aphorism it's:

"We all die but I do it sooner and with more foreknowledge than most - what a random unavoidable embuggerance."

There's no hollowness or undue sadness there.

[cbayer]

10. I suspect you can be more truly empathic than I because of your own situation.

At any rate, it is brave to write of one's own illness and possible death, so I do have respect for his having done so.

I also agree that the stages of grief are neither mandatory nor immutable.

[rrneck]

4. From the movie Lion in Winter

Geoffrey: You chivalric fool. As if the way one fell down matters.

Richard: When the fall is all there is, it matters.

[independentpiney]

6. I'm an atheist with MS

along with some more serious health issues and I'm not sure I understand what point he's trying to get across, if any. Is it that he can accept having the disease without feeling angry that it's some sort of divine punishment or karmic retribution? Also I hope he's figured out in the year since his diagnosis that he's not going to die of MS. Honestly this comes across to me like he's trying to convince himself and the world that he's not depressed or self-pitying.

[mr blur]

8. I'm an atheist with MS, too

Science is not my god, but it may well be my salvation.

<snip>

For an atheist and a happy and optimistic nihilist like me, who doesn't mind that there is no point to any of this, that it just is, something like this just lines up in the queue with all of the other contingent events that confront us.

True enough.

I remember feeling as confused and 'lost' when I had my DX (14 years ago).