I was PMing another debater and struck a thought. This world is full of hardship and troubles. Some people are able to navigate through these waves relatively cleanly. Others however get swamped.
Those who get swamped can often find themselves with absolutely nothing to bolster them or their hopes. They have a family, but that family has turned their back on the person. They had money and a home, but those are gone or taken. They had health, but now they are sick. These are the truly hopeless. They have nothing in the world to be proud of. They have nothing in this world to give them comfort or solace.
No speaking strictly about these people does religion, no matter how flawed or incorrect, give them hope? Does religion give them comfort in a world which has turned them away; cast them aside?
Second question, can the atheist philosophies compare in this area? Is there anything in atheism which can inspire a homeless drug addict with aids to have hope?
Simone Weil's profound description of the value of Christianity addresses just this question:
"The tremendous greatness of Christianity", writes Simone Weil, "comes from the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy against suffering but a supernatural use of suffering."
She refers to consciously carrying ones cross. Hope in this sense doesn't apply to relief in life but rather freedom through re-birth from the human condition that perpetuates the blindness of this life. Christ opened the path to the way from doing just that by consciously witnessing the Crucifixion.
Hope in this sense is defined by Jacob Needleman:
When living appears hopeless, it is the inner attribute of hope along with faith and love of God that allows a person to sustain the consciousness necessary to profit from suffering through re-birth regardless of all our habitual doubts and fears that normally make us lose consciousness. Hope then offers the Christian possibilities in respect to the hopelessness of the human condition or life in Plato's cave."Hope is a state of the mind, not of the world... Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for...success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed."
An atheist that acquires this quality of hope is not an atheist since atheism denies higher life. What could be hopeless for the atheist would not deny hope for the Christian since he knows that life is not limited to his earthly experiences and has hope as an inner attribute.
