I recently gave some atheist advice.

[John Gauger]

I have a friend that is going through a rough patch and the other day she was telling about her problems. Without getting into too much detail, a lot of her family and friends are sick right now with various ailments and she is afraid of losing them. She has been taking it pretty hard and I decided to check in on her. Now, I have been intimately familiar with depression my entire life, but I was not able to find anything helpful to tell her how to cope with it, as I am currently in the middle of a downward spiral myself.

However, she asked me what is the point of life, if we just meet people, love them, get hurt, heal, and get hurt again, in an endless Sisyphean rollercoaster ride until the moment of our inexorable death. Finally, something I can answer! I can speak intelligently on the existential nightmare that plagues us all. So I told her, "If there's one thing I've learned by being an atheist, it's 'Don't ever ask 'Why?'' There is no 'why.' They tell you that god has a plan, that everything happens for a reason, and that all you have to do is have faith and everything will make sense in the end. I'm gonna be straight with you: that's a lie. There is no plan, and it will never make sense. There is nobody up there making these bad things happen to you. These things just happen. Don't wait around for all this to make sense, because you will be waiting for something that isn't ever going to get there. It was a huge relief for me when I stopped asking why."

She seemed to take it pretty well. It was an interesting experience, doing the opposite of what the Jesus-freaks tell you. Has anybody else had any experience with this sort of reverse proselytizing?