Just go ahead and google the term “Atheist Dad”. Try it in another tab right now, I’ll wait.
At the time I wrote this, the first three pages of results are all a news story where a tearful child asks the pope if his atheist dad is in heaven.
And it goes on for a bit about how the pope was like “Hey, he baptized you and your brothers right? Surely God wouldn’t send his soul to hell for eternity just because he wasn’t baptized.”
And, I mean, despite being entirely antithetical to the religion that he’s in charge of, it still isn’t a very good answer.
I’ll give you my answer to the little boy doesn’t seem as positive on the surface. Because I would’ve just told that kid, “No. Your atheist dad isn’t in heaven, but the great news is that he isn’t in hell either.”
I don’t really have a lot of patience for the idea of heaven anymore. I understand that there is comfort in thinking, or hoping, that you’re going to see friends and loved ones again, this time without the trappings of misery and pain that separated you in the first place. I get the draw there.
But I also feel like we need to do a better job of being here now. And as an atheist dad, I have a bone to pick with heaven.
Heaven is a mulligan
At some point I realized that heaven was a cop-out for people who didn’t want to try very hard in this life. Don’t really like your kids? Well great news! You can ignore them in mortality and then spend time with them when they’re in the final perfect form!
My former faith, Mormonism, has a particularly convoluted plan. A lot of Christian heaven is really mailed in: the classic “here’s your harp and your halo” garbage. I never liked that version of heaven. I really did prefer the Mormon version of heaven and you know what? I still do. Mormon heaven is Minecraft but where I can make dragons and have them fight each other. People shit on the “people becoming a god and getting their own planet” part but, I’m sorry, that’s a pretty fucking rad concept. Yeah, you’re right. Making a planet where I can make lava dragons and giant sharks and the worms from Tremors is somehow worse than “we’re asexually worshipping god forever platonically like in the clouds or something or whatever”.
Seriously. Heaven, conceptually is the worst. And even when you have a version of heaven that is nuanced and interesting and honestly less boring it’s still pretty boring. And Mormons ruin the whole thing by introducing a literal patriarchy into it. So people start to think that they’re going to be in charge of their family unit forever.
The Patriarchy is
My dad is obsessed with being the patriarch of the family. He loves it. But the fatal flaw in being the patriarch of a family that exists in a mortal sphere, is when you remove that mortal sphere. My dad will just be one of a long line of patriarchs all wondering why no one is paying attention to them and muttering ‘this is why we can’t have nice things’. That’s another rant for another day.
All I’m saying is that heaven gives people the excuse to suck at something now because they’ll literally have forever to get it right later. That’s a terrible way to raise your kids.
And the atheist dad, who for whatever reason decided to baptize his kids, would likely have wanted his son to know that he loved him very much. And that he was proud of him. And that he loved the memories that they made together and to really hold on to those because we only have so precious few of those moments to share with the people we love.
And I think the son knows that too, because he loves his dad so much that he wants to know if there’s any chance that he won’t be burned in hell forever for not believing. And that’s pretty sad.
So, to my kids, I don’t want you to worry about me going to hell. Or heaven for that matter. An infinite amount of pleasure or pain is just a constant amount of normal anyway. Eventually constant paradise becomes as much a torture as fire and brimstone. But my life with my kids is full and exciting and varied and interesting and evolving. And I find myself checking my anger a lot because I know there’s no make-up test. If I fail now as a father, I don’t get a second go at it.
It’s a heavy mantle to bear but I’m happy to bear it. My main hope is that I can raise my kids well enough that even if they decide to join some religion they won’t ever worry if I’m in heaven. They’ll know that my heaven was every second I got to spend with them on Earth.