Column

Atheism

Creed

1 September 2023

6 min read

Confessions of an atheist philosopher. Part 4: The empty promises of “be here now”

In the fourth of a series, philosopher Stefani Ruper tries the most popular advice given by atheist philosophers.

Stefani Ruper

Stefani Ruper is a philosopher specialising in the ethics of belief and Associate Member of Christ Church College, Oxford. She received her PhD from the Theology & Religion faculty at the University of Oxford in 2020.

A graffited wall shows a stick man face next to 'what now'

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

My name is Stefani. I was a committed atheist for almost my entire life. I studied religion to try to figure out how to have spiritual fulfillment without God. I tried writing books on spirituality for agnostics and atheists, but I gave up because the answers were terrible. Two years after completing my PhD, I finally realised that that’s because the answer is God.

Today, I explain how and why I decided to walk into Christian faith.

Here at Seen and Unseen I am publishing a six-article series highlighting key turning points or realisations I made on my walk into faith. It tells my story, and it tells our story too.

I spent the first thirty years of my life looking for ways to have spiritual fulfillment as an atheist. I even got a PhD studying theology trying to figure out how to get the same peace and joy my religious friends had without believing in God.

For a brief period after finishing my PhD I thought I might have found some solutions. I tried writing books about them titled things like How to Have an Existential Crisis and Agnosticism: The Real Spiritual Truth and Joy. But they were not good books. When I shared this opinion with my friends, they all thought I was being too hard on myself. But I knew the truth: the answers I was providing just weren’t good enough. They didn’t make me feel happy or peaceful. Why would they work for anyone else?

I had one last resort to try: giving up, which is the advice most atheist philosophers provide. According to them, happiness lies not in finding the meaning of life, but in accepting that there is none. Relax, they say. Stop searching for something that isn’t there! Be a good person. Enjoy the present moment. Be here now!

I decided to give it a try—and I really did try my best. I got a prestigious job. I rented an expensive apartment with a balcony overlooking Harvard Square. I bought a brand-new car and paid an extra $600 for a special-edition paint colour. I partied a few nights a week. I meditated every day. I cultivated friendships. I dated. I went hiking and sat on park benches and wondered at the beauty of nature.

Everyone who followed me on Instagram thought I was having the time of my life. But I have never been more miserable.

“Be here now” reduces meaning and possibilities for spiritual fulfillment

Of course, there are beautiful aspects to being present. It is true that being aware, mindful, and grateful in each moment enriches life.

But when that’s all there is, you run into three big problems.

1: Meaning is flimsy

All religions offer meaning that has what Donald Crosby calls a personal-cosmic link—that is, a way to explain our personal stories in terms of a bigger, ultimate story. These stories call us to be the best versions of ourselves for the sake of something beyond us. They give us reason to actualize. They provide solace when we falter or suffer. They offer meaning that is fulfilling, reliable, and concrete.

In contrast, when meaning exists only in the here and now, it’s not out a real thing out there to be discovered, but only something you can make up if you feel like it. Such meaning is flimsy, easily transgressed, and forgotten.

2: The universe is a cold, empty, meaningless void

Believing in God or some transcendent source turns existence into what William James calls a thou. Humans are naturally social beings and always in relationship. Being able to have a relationship with the source of all existence adds great potential for love, awe, adoration, belonging, and homecoming to life. In contrast, when the present moment is all there is, the universe is a cold, empty, meaningless void you just bumble along in until you die.

3: Life is unsatisfying, pain harder to bear, and effort more difficult

“Why bother?” is a common refrain in modern culture. There are many reasons, including unjust systems and corrupt institutions. But one major reason is that living only in the here and now traps what counts as “good” and “evil” in the here and now, too.

The highest good can only ever be pleasure (things like ‘flourishing' and 'well-being' are measurable only by how good they feel), and the worst evil can only ever be pain (suffering and injustice are similarly measurable only by how bad they feel).

Pleasure, however, never lasts. Dopamine, the neuromodulator that creates a feeling of satisfaction every time you obtain something you want (a meal, an achievement, a date with a crush), falls right back down after you get it, typically to levels lower than when you started. No matter how much you love, or how hard you party, or how much you sacrifice to help others feel good, you (and they) end up in the same state of longing you started in—or worse.

The only solution is to keep pursuing more pleasure. Many fall prey to all sorts of unhealthy attachments such as to substances, sex, and entertainment. Personally, I was most attached to professional success, food, and romantic love. I kept chasing ultimate satisfaction—while realising more every day that it was never going to come.

Pain, the greatest evil, is unavoidable. It can never be overcome. This makes us its victims, “helpless cogs in a cruel machine,” as Tim Keller puts it. This can create a victim mentality as well as a sense of futility, as there is nothing you can do to escape it or give it meaning. Many consider it their purpose in life to fight pain, but as none of us can ever put a significant dent in it, such efforts can feel pointless. Personally, I felt hammered by successive loss and the absurdity of injustice. I had no way to cope other than to escape with pleasure or to numb myself.

Back to the drawing board

Living in my sky rise apartment overlooking Harvard, I would often make a cup of tea and go stand on the balcony. I’d stare off into the horizon, my heart thudding dull and sluggish in my chest, and wonder: is this all there is?

It had been more than twenty years since the first time I read a book on philosophy and started my lifelong quest for spiritual fulfillment without God. I had remained hopeful that I would find an answer. And if there wasn’t an answer to be found, I would create one.

But as I sipped my tea and watched the sun slip below the horizon, night after night, I began to suspect that I was going to fail. I had just tried the most popular advice given by the most esteemed atheist philosophers and came up empty handed.

After just nine months, I pulled the plug on the experiment. A professor in France had recently published a paper on atheism I found intriguing. I terminated my lease, quit my job, and hopped on a plane. Two days later I dropped my books on a desk in the university bibliothèque and settled in to keep learning.

Little did I know, the program of research I’d given myself wasn’t about to deepen my understanding of atheism.

It was about to lead me to the one place I never thought I’d end up: in the loving arms of God.

Article

Creed

Education

11 September 2025

5 min read

Our social problems need theology, here’s why

Taking the god’s-eye view develops critical skills

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

young people listen, and ponder, to a speaker off screen.

M Accelerator on Unsplash.

At secondary school level, Religious Studies continues to attract strong numbers. On the surface, this looks like a healthy sign for the subject. Yet, critics argue that appearances can be deceiving: many faith-based schools make the subject compulsory, artificially pushing up participation. The result is a stark disconnect when students progress to higher education. Here interest appears to drop off sharply, and several universities have been forced to close their single-honours degrees in Theology and Religious Studies due to unsustainable student numbers.

But this presents a misleading picture – even at tertiary level students are far more interested in Theology and Religious Studies than the statistics seem to suggest. While few undergraduates commit to a full degree in Theology, (in Scotland this is called Divinity) or Religious Studies, partly because career pathways outside of ordained ministry and teaching can seem unclear, many are eager to sample the subject alongside their main studies. This means that at the University of Aberdeen, the department of Divinity finds a different kind of relevance. Thanks to Aberdeen’s flexible degree structure, it is not unusual to find law, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and even physics students sitting in on our undergraduate modules. This interdisciplinary mix brings a distinctive energy to classroom discussions, as well as a few challenges… and challengers.

Some students arrive never having opened a Bible, never having heard a word from the Qur’an, and never having engaged with any other religious text. Many are openly ambivalent about the existence of God, some downright hostile, and more than a few admit that they were drawn in by the promise of coursework-based assessment rather than traditional exams. Yet, once in the room, most engage with surprising enthusiasm, and even the challengers play a vital role.

What emerges is a lively space where students approach theology less as a matter of personal faith and more as an intellectual exercise, grappling with life’s big questions, testing out ideas, and debating seriously with the prospect that God exists. Far from diminishing the subject, this shift gives the Divinity department a new role: not as a training ground for clergy, but as a forum for critical thinking across disciplines.

In one of our courses for example, students are asked to debate this question: if a human chooses to go wild swimming in a crocodile’s natural habitat, does the crocodile have a right to kill and eat that human, as it would any other prey item that strayed into its path? Or, if a person with profound physical and intellectual disability is not able to live out many of the rights and responsibilities envisaged by the United Nations Convention on Human Rights, on what grounds are they still reckoned to be a human person? As we tease out the (multiple) possible answers to these questions, many of the turn out to be surprisingly theological. Whilst some students will work towards becoming better able to affirm and articulate their own atheism, others are surprised to discover that they have been living out a deistic morality all along; on the quiet, their internal moral compass believes in God.

But my sense is that even if students don’t walk out with an easy A, they walk out with a set of skills that is, in the long run, far more valuable.

Further to that, in an open letter the Theos think tank recently highlighted the role of theology in the ethical and cultural development of communities. They argue that theological study equips people to engage thoughtfully with different people groups and traditions, to develop skills in interfaith dialogue, and to promote communication across cultural barriers. Put simply:

“In an increasingly polarised world, it helps us understand other points of view.”

This insight is highly relevant to our students as they set out on varied career paths in an increasingly complex world. The skills honed in our Divinity classrooms – empathy, critical thinking, close observation, and clear writing – are both essential and transferable. Theology degrees do not lead only to ordination or teaching; they can open doors to careers in journalism, diplomacy, politics, community work, authorship, and screenwriting, among many others. As Professor Gordon Lynch, Professor of Religion, Society and Ethics at the University of Edinburgh, observed at a recent panel discussion:

“It’s very difficult to think about a major geopolitical issue at the moment in which religion isn’t deeply implicated in some way.”

The relevance of theological training extends far beyond traditional disciplines. For example, law students will need to recognise not only that a person with profound disability is a human person, but also to understand the deeper ethical and theological reasons why society judges this to be so. International Relations students will need to appreciate why resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict is not as simple as drawing lines on a map, but is rooted in long histories of faith, identity, and belonging – histories which will reach their influence far into the future as well as the present. Sports science and physiotherapy students will need to empathise with the human drive to become ever faster and stronger, while discerning when to help people recognise the limits before injury occurs.

So, we gather all these students and more into our divinity courses, and work with them as they develop such skills. By discussing these matters as though God exists, in a space where there is unapologetic openness to confessional or deistic ways of looking at the world, students are freed to adopt a third-person standpoint, a “god’s-eye view” if you like, which allows them to critically examine both their own and other people’s perspectives. When this freedom becomes apparent, it is the challengers often find themselves the ones being challenged, and hostility soon morphs into vibrant dialogue. Also, for those who want “an easy A” it quickly becomes apparent that coursework-based assessment is in no way easier than traditional exams – if anything, it can be the opposite! Getting your ideas down on paper, coherently, and with relevant references to research from across disciplines is a sophisticated competency. But my sense is that even if students don’t walk out with an easy A, they walk out with a set of skills that is, in the long run, far more valuable.

With an eye to business models and balance sheets, many universities don’t think they need their theology departments anymore, and with the current financial precarity faced by the higher education sector, on paper this may be true. But society is crying out for complex ways forwards with complex situations, and the problems of social division are becoming more apparent than ever. Whilst it is clear that fewer and fewer students are choosing to do whole theology degrees, it is also clear the world still needs theologians.

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief

Pledge now