On Avoiding Bitterness—How Atheism Helped Me

When I was around the age of 30, my oldest daughter was diagnosed with autism, and soon after I was diagnosed with bipolar. I felt some bitterness. My coming to terms with not feeling bitter marked the center of my personal emotional evolution at the time. The lessons I learned have helped me get through many struggles without succumbing to too much bitterness. This, good people, is my story!

Bitterness is a real danger for both parents of children with special needs and people with mental illness. I was in potential trouble. Both then and now, I believe there were many factors that prevented me from ruining my life with bitterness. Part of it was the need to keep a clear head so I could support my family. I was not only the main breadwinner, but, for most of the time, the only person in the family bringing in much money at all. 

There was one overriding factor, however: atheism. I think that, by not believing in a personal God, I was able to more easily navigate the perilous emotional waters of being a parent of a child with special needs while, at the same time, tending to my mental health. I did feel some bitterness, this is true. But I had no intention, by another person, to attach it to. If I believed in God, I would have thought He did this to me, and I would have been confused, hurt, angry, and very bitter. But I thought nature and human stupidity did it. My daughter, no doubt, had a genetic predisposition to autism. And there are a lot of autism cases in Buffalo, NY, where she was conceived, carried, and birthed. I believe it comes from all the pollution there. Love's Canal, the first superfund site, is nearby. Buffalo is ringed with toxic sites. Humans did not pollute with the intention of giving my daughter autism, although her condition may very well have been caused, in part, by it.

Before moving on, I want to emphasize that I realize that many people receive great comfort from a belief in God. I am not knocking that. I am not saying I think everyone should be atheists. Your religious views are your business. I am simply sharing how I navigated a difficult emotional period. By doing so, others may be able to apply some of what I relate to their own lives, whether or not it entails atheism. We all need to forge our own path. Please, take what's useful from mine, and ignore the rest.

I went to a number of support groups for families of special needs children. Invariably, someone there would agonize over why God would do such a horrible thing to him or her and their family. These people were devastated and profoundly hurt. I was, too, but I never for a second thought someone or some spirit called a God intended this to happen to me and my family. It always struck me as an unfortunate, but huge, accident. What do you do when there is an accident? You don't bemoan it. You don't find someone to blame. You pick up the pieces and move on. My atheism helped me to do that.

There is nothing that corresponds to human intention in nature—the nature that births some people with a genetic propensity that can react with pollutants to create autism. It just happens. The same way a leaf falls come autumn. The same way moving water etches its way even into granite over eons. The same way a tiger attacks and kills a panicked goat. How could I get angry at and feel bitter toward a leaf falling, toward the slow erosion of hard rock, toward a tiger doing its thing? There is no point. This is where we live, in and among nature. There is no fighting it. You need to ride what's given you.

What's interesting is that in the past few years I have become convinced that there is a profound wisdom in nature that is so far beyond mere human conception as to be unfathomable. I did not believe this in my early 30s. I suppose this sense is somewhat akin to a theist's belief in a God's will beyond human ken. But I see no spirit there. I believe subatomic matter—with its massive spaces, weird particles and bizarre forces—is all the wildness we need. We don't need to have recourse to spirit with this stuff available everywhere, of which we are made.

What is this wisdom? I don't know. Rather, I sense it. But even giving it a word, such as "wisdom," limits it in ridiculous ways. This is a strange wisdom, that allows for terrific suffering and torture from a conventional human perspective. It allows hungry wolves to prey on frightened, wounded deer. The world is, from our human perspective, a terrible place full of woe and suffering. But there is a larger perspective. There is a way to see beyond a simple anthropocentric world view. But it can't be put into language. You either sense it, or you don't.

Rarely have I heard about the possible comforts that atheism can bring. I hope my story reveals that it can offer as much comfort as the theistic perspective, and that theism brings with it many potential emotional traps. Religion can not only profoundly hurt us personally, but it can do so interpersonally, as well. People sometimes kill each other over economics. They often do so over religion. Religion can hurt on a number of levels.