In my daily summary of Google news, one of my favourite authors, Anne Rice, talks to the Kansas City Star about how she’s gone from being an atheist to being religious again.

It’s interesting to me that some people who are affected by traumatic events return to, or find religion.  In the article Rice is quoted as saying she can now hope to be reunited with her child at some future point.  For someone like me this is simply wishful thinking, and just because she believes in God now, does not change reality of life.  All that has changed is her perception of the world around her.

For Anne being an atheist wasn’t easy, and she’s right, for some people grasping what the evidence shows us can sometimes be frightening and scary.  In some ways I understand why someone who’s suffered a traumatic event might find religion comforting.  The compassionate part of me says we shouldn’t try to convince people otherwise, as long as their innocent faith doesn’t turn to something bitter and twisted.

Has Anne’s change of heart changed my mind about her work?  Absolutely not, because I read books written by a brilliant and captivating author.  Just because she’s decided she believes in God doesn’t change the fact she’s written some amazing stories.

In some ways it is disappointing that such an intelligent and creative woman has reverted to a belief in the sky fairy.  However I ask myself is it better to have a happy and productive Christian life, than a woefully miserable and desperate one as an atheist?  However when you look more closely, it is fear and loss that seem to be drivers behind this reversion.  This supports the Richard Dawkins argument about religion being promoted through fear.  It is remarkable that an attachment to the material world drives people to religion, so that they can maintain some form of attachment after they experience loss.  Buddhists talk of not being attached to the material world in order to free ourselves from pain and suffering.  Atheism certainly recognises the nature of the world as it is, pain, death, life, joy, all swirling around us.

My school of thought is that without pain how can we know pleasure or joy.  I can look at my life and say "One day I will die, and that is the end of me", or I can look at my life and think about the difference I want to make in the world right now.  I can’t escape the fact I will die, so why dwell on it?  It’s simply a part of nature.  The point about atheism being hard isn’t new, and Julie Sweeney really digs into the emotional aspect of this in her audio book "Letting go of God".

I think for people who are students of nature and science we approach these questions with a more empirical mind, and rationalise things with an almost Mr Spock type logic.  Perhaps it just takes remarkable strength of character to be atheist?  Perhaps for the artistic mind, such detachment is difficult, and so the comfort of religion does away with all the unpleasant reality of the world, and replaces it with a warm comfort blanket of perceived reality (God).