If you lived through the Sixties, Seventies, or Eighties, you may be familiar with Madalyn Murray O'Hair.  One of America's most outspoken atheists in her day, O'Hair made international headlines in 1963 when she successfully challenged the law allowing officially sanctioned Bible reading in public schools.  In the wake of the Supreme Court's rejection of this law, O'Hair became known, as Time Magazine put it, the "most hated woman in America."
     Unfortunately, in 1995, O'Hair met an ugly end when she, along with a son and granddaughter, were kidnapped and brutally murdered by a convicted felon who had at one time worked for her organization, American Atheists.  It was a shocking demise to a shock inducing career.  Regrettably, the least charitable people of faith among us labeled it the revenge of God.

    

  
     But there's more to the story.  O'Hair's other son became a Christian in 1980, and subsequently directed his life in a direction precisely opposite that of his mother.  She promptly disowned him.  More recently, however, O'Hair's diaries were auctioned for study.  Those privileged to read them were particularly struck by one phrase they found. It was, "All I want is for someone to love me."
     This should make all of us weep.  For all her metaphysical (or lack thereof!) bravado, in her deepest heart, O'Hair simply wanted to be loved.  Beneath it all, she longed to feel the love of another human being.  Even if O'Hair had no use for the love of God, she nonetheless desired love.
     As do we all.  I wonder, however, whether we ever think to ask ourselves why.  In a cold and impersonal universe, a wholly naturalistic cosmos, one that, to quote Bertrand Russell, is built on "the scaffolding of despair," how do we know what love is?  If we begin with meaninglessness and caprice, we likely will not end with meaning and order.
     But we insist we do.  So why do we want to be loved?  Perhaps it is because in our heart of hearts, all theological explanation set aside, we want to think, indeed, we must think, that we are supposed to be here.
     If so, why?