Three Stages of Disbelief Julian Savulescu I used to be a believer, a ...

Three Stages of Disbelief
Julian Savulescu
I used to be a believer, a devout believer, but am no more. My elevation to a state of
disbelief came in three stages. But first, let me tell you about when I was a believer.
In early adolescence, I came to understand what death entailed. I became
frightened. In conjunction, or perhaps as a consequence, I began to believe in a father
figure who would give meaning to life, and death. I went to a religious school, where
we had bible readings and lessons every morning. We sang hymns and had
compulsory religious education. I devoured “the Message” and believed. I thought
deeply about religion and enjoyed studying it. I won the religious studies prize two
years in a row at my school. I was a favourite of the chaplain.
Every night, I said the Lord’s Prayer before I went to sleep. But before this, I
said my own prayer. I first invented it when I was about 12. It began, “Please God,
protect me from heart disease, cancer, TB, anthrax, syphilis, foot and mouth disease,
…” I added every disease I would hear of and a number of other injunctions for
protection. It grew and grew. The whole incantation went on for over five minutes in
the end, possibly ten (it was no doubt a memory enhancer). I could not sleep if I had
not said my prayers. I became extremely superstitious, believing I would be afflicted
by one of these terrible diseases if I did not say my prayer.
The first stage of my disbelief came on at about 16 when the whole project
began to look hopelessly implausible and more an invention to provide security and
exercise social control through fear, authority and mystery. I could no longer believe
that Jesus walked on water, or turned water into wine, or that there was a Heaven and

an afterlife. Such things seemed metaphysically inconsistent with what I knew of the
world and any scientific understanding of it. The whole thing seemed like a fairy tale
that had served a socially and psychologically useful function in the past, but had just
run out of gas. This was the stage of metaphysical implausibility. It was not profound,
or novel, but it was my experience.
I continued to hold a quasi-God concept. My father, who was a kind, generous
and good man, said he always believed in his own version of God. God came to
represent not a story about the world or the afterlife, but spirituality and the mystical.
I started reading a lot of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and was affected by it. They
seemed to blend religion with philosophy and wisdom.
Dostoyevsky wrote in Crime and Punishment: “Accept suffering and achieve
atonement through it—that is what you must do.” “For broad understanding and deep
feeling, you need pain and suffering. I believe really great men must experience great
sadness in the world.”
And Tolstoy wrote in War and Peace: “To love life is to love God. Harder and
more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved
sufferings.”
These were great writers and students of human psychology. I absorbed their
ideas like a sponge.
But then I finished my time as a medical student and began work as a doctor. I
remember vividly the first death I had to certify as an intern. I went into the room and
the undertaker was waiting to take the body away. I did the necessary tests but then
lingered. The undertaker could see me staring at the gaping, toothless mouth and the
open, glazed eyes.

serene.”
“They are always open. We sew them closed to make them look peaceful and
I saw for the first time the reality of death and suffering. I did some hard jobs
like Haematology and Oncology, and Intensive Care. I saw completely innocent
ordinary young people die agonising deaths, their skin peeling from their body as they
were narcotised to death. I saw horrible burns and amputated limbs from utterly
meaningless accidents. I saw people screaming as they died and others silent with
terror.
I wasn’t there, but I remember hearing the typical story of a young girl who
was drunk and rolled her car. She regained consciousness to be told her spinal cord
had been severed completely at C5 and she would never move her arms or legs. But
she might get off the breathing machine. And the tear that came to her eye as she lay
motionless.
“It’s a high price to pay for getting drunk,” said one doctor.
That doctor had long black hair and beard, a leather jacket and a pocket knife
on his belt. He looked like the Hell’s Angel “Sonny” Barger. He is also a meticulous,
brilliant neurosurgeon who has done great good in his life.
While there is a voluminous theological literature spanning millennia on the
problem of suffering, and great writers like Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy propose
solutions, the idea that there was any value or meaning in suffering and death
evaporated for me. What I saw and heard just killed a belief in God for me, for no
special philosophical reason. This was a phase of existential senselessness. I bought a
safe car, went surfing and skiing a lot and decided to do philosophy, not to find
meaning but because I had always enjoyed it, before I was dealt my nasty card. That
was my response to the value of suffering.

My final phase of disbelief came only relatively recently. I continued to want
to believe, wanting the protection of a father and the certainty and determinate
direction of religion. But slowly I accepted the burden of atheism. I remember once,
looking at the ceiling, wishing God or some Impartial Observer existed so I could
simply ask Him what I should do in one dilemma in my life. To ask him who was
right. But there was no one there. I spoke to great philosophers, psychiatrists,
psychologists, and other people with wisdom and experience. I received sensible,
reasoned lines of advice which conflicted. I came to accept that there is no one who
will alleviate the burden of moral choice. And in the end, we will die alone. We must
make these choices ourselves, and bear the responsibility of them.
It is difficult to be a good atheist. Because it is difficult to be a good man. And
it is difficult to confront ambiguity, uncertainty and the unavoidable losses of human
life and choice, without clutching at false truths.
Would I have changed what I have done, the choices I have made, if I had
believed in God? If God exists, He will judge what we have done. It is vaguely
reassuring to know that when people disapprove of what we do, God would know our
real reasons. I am prepared to account for what I have done.
I have hurt many people but I have tried to do what I should do. There are
many things I would have done differently but, at the time, they seemed right. I hope I
will not make the same mistakes, but fallibility is a part of the human condition.
Would God reward Bush for invading Iraq, or those who stop the use of
contraception in poor, undeveloped, overpopulated parts of the world or the use of
condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, or terrorists who kill in His name? I find it
incredible that He would reward the deliberate, foreseeable, avoidable infliction of
misery even in His name. More incredible than His existence.

Now, I believe God’s existence is irrelevant. What matters is ethical
behaviour, to act with good reason, to reflect and accept responsibility for action, and
for failing to act. It won’t matter to God that actions were performed, or not
performed, in His name or by reference to His scriptures. What matters is whether
they are ethical.
Beckett, another favourite of my youth, wrote in Waiting for Godot, “To every
man his little cross. (He sighs.) Till he dies. (Afterthought.) And is forgotten.”
It may be that the crosses which we bear are in some sense small. And
certainly we will be forgotten. But in between, there is also our life. I hope, if He
exists, He will approve of what I have chosen to do. But for me, what matters now, is
that this life is what I have chosen and I chose it with good reason. And that spattered
among the times of great suffering, and before our eventual annihilation, there are
moments of exquisite beauty, deep human connection, happiness and fulfilment.
Watching my son laugh as he rides a bike for the first time. Taking my
daughters, who are now nine and eleven, off piste skiing for the first time in two feet
of virgin powder snow. Doing one hundred or more turns and finding them both right
behind, with smiles from ear to ear, as they realise they can do it and that they have
been flying. Paddling out in the surf in the early morning sun, in a crystal calm ocean
between the corduroy sets, as the first wave hits me in the face. That is what I believe
in now.