Waiting for God: The Spiritual Reflections of a Reluctant Atheist

by Lawrence Bush

Why are so many baby boomers tuned into a quest for spirituality? How did growing up with the Bomb influence a generation's view of science and spirit? What effects did psychedelic drugs have on American spirituality? What is the difference between open-mindedness and gullibility? Is God a necessary part of a religious life? Is atheism merely a negation of religious belief, or is it something more? Waiting for God challenges us to become the God we seek: Like Prometheus, Bush steals the Heavenly Fire, and treasures a vision of planting it in his own heart and the hearts of his fellow men. Waiting for God offers a probing look at the generational factors - growing up with the Bomb, psychedelic drugs, environmental crisis, and more - that led the Woodstock generation down the path of spirituality. Waiting for God grasps, from an atheist's perspective, the sense of human interconnection that defines contemporary spirituality and poses challenges for skeptics and humanists to provide spiritual leadership in a hungry age.

209 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2008

Reviews

[Jason Pettus · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

Regular readers know that I have been an atheist for around 25 years now; but they will also know that I am a religion-friendly atheist (otherwise known as a "secular humanist"), and in fact a member of the progressive interfaith movement as well. And so when I recently came across last year's Waiting for God by Lawrence Bush here in the Chicago library system, I was understandably excited; according to the cover, it was to be an intellectual examination of spiritual issues by a humanist-style atheist, exactly the kind of things I muse about in my personal life these days as well. Unfortunately, though, Waiting for God turns out to not be that at all; penned by a former '60s radical (what he terms a "Woodstocker"), the book is much more an examination and long-term analysis of that remarkable period of history, looking back 40 years later at whether any of the things the Woodstockers believed in spiritually have actually come to pass. And from that aspect, this book is actually kind of fascinating; various chapters here deal with such things as the long-term effect of psychedelics on the Woodstockers' view of spirituality, whether the mixing of Eastern and Western philosophies in the '60s turned out to be ultimately a good or bad thing, and whether it was right for hippies to reject such conservative religious concepts as "original sin" and the existence of Hell. Just, you know, please realize that this book actually has very little to do with atheism, and is much more interested in asking questions than providing answers; as long as you realize this beforehand, though, I definitely recommend the slim and easily readable volume.

[Sparrow .]

Larry refers to this as his “dissertation,” the book he wrote in lieu of getting a PhD. It’s a series of cogent, sustained arguments, supporting an untenable thesis. Atheism can’t be proven, any more than cynicism can be proven. It’s a viewpoint, not an ideology. To my mind it’s a religion, actually. How can you be certain God doesn’t exist, except through some divine revelation – or rather anti-divine anti-revelation?

Larry goes through various belief systems that he can almost accept, but pushes away at the last moment. The ones he comes closest to embracing are synchronicity and the writings of Starhawk. The problem is he’s just reinventing Buddhism: an intellectually responsible non-theistic doctrine that distrusts sentimentality and lazy truisms.

I read this book as if it were a cheap detective novel, gulping it down addictively. How many metaphysical books by Red Diaper Babies exist? My own position is quite close to Larry’s, yet in some ways the opposite. I’m an agnostic; I love religion; I practice yoga meditation. What does that make me? A self-doubting mystic? A suspicious devotee? I find the easy answers of atheism more bogus than the Nicene Creed.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of people would probably be bored to tears by this book, which is basically just commentary by the author on various belief systems. But I found it interesting – it introduced me to a lot of religious teachers that I had never heard of. The author discusses and ultimately rejects various schools of thought regarding religion. It was very philosophical and didn't really have a lot of internal structure, it was pretty much just chapters dealing with different belief systems and why he found them lacking. It didn't discuss traditional Christianity much, except to reject it, but it discussed a lot of New Age teachers and beliefs that I found interesting. The author approaches everything from a Jewish perspective, and discusses his drug use as a potential way of connecting with spirituality, which I found a little strange