Life is just nature’s way of
keeping meat fresh.
- Dr. Who, 2005.
In the essay An Examination of the House of God I
found said House to be unsound because of its faulty biblical foundations, its
very human god, its incredible doctrines and model for the meaning of life. Must
it therefore follow that there is no God and no special meaning to life – is Dr.
Who correct, and is life: “just nature’s way of keeping meat fresh”?
No.
You cannot establish one position simply by
demolishing one opposing position. For example, the implied atheist position – there
can be no ‘G’ God because Christianity’s ‘g’ god is faulty – is illogical. The Judeo/Christian
god is a parochial god created in man’s (and I mean man’s) own image by some semi-nomadic, desert tribes – a hard,
brutal, sexist god out of a hard land in a brutal, sexist time. This god was an
attempt by pre-scientific men to explain existence and to understand the mysteries
of life. It was their theory of everything. Their god created everything, with
the Earth as central, and made the tribe who invented “H” Him “God’s chosen
people”. Through education the great majority of us lose faith in this incredible
and very human god – we discover that the Christian House of God is
accommodating an incredible god of an ancient tribe and that other Houses of
God (especially those founded on an ancient “B” Book) are equally incredible.
So, what must necessarily follow from declaring the
Judeo/Christian god – or the equally incredible god of any other religion –
dead? Nietzsche, when he made his great iconoclastic statement, “God is dead … and we have killed him”
was referring to “him” – the above incredible Judeo/Christian male “g” god. He
was not saying that he had conducted a thorough search into our numinous world,
into the spiritual, unearthed all possible credible “G” Gods then slayed them. Atheistic
philosophy has been dancing on the wrong grave (or more correctly – an empty
one) ever since Nietzsche.
Atheistic philosophy also dismisses the idea of any special
meaning and/or ultimate purpose in life after they expose the bankruptcy of
religions’ models of special meaning and purpose (usually a one-off test for a
stream of new souls resulting in their eternal physical punishment or reward). Again,
just because religion has not achieved a credible meaning and purpose for life
does not mean that there is none. I will examine life for evidence of credible special
meaning, ultimate purpose – and even God – outside of religion, in Essay 3.
But in this essay I will examine whether disbelief has
become an “H” House as much as religion – designed similarly to comfort, and with
many similarities to the House of God. It has its Bible: (The Origin of Species);
saints: (Schopenhauer, Darwin, Bentham, Marx, Bertrand Russell, Freud, Sartre);
religious organisations: (sceptic and atheist societies); zealots: (Michael
Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Phillip Adams; Christopher Hitchens).
It also has dogma: we are just a bag of “selfish
genes” (Dawkins); just a “a hunk of
matter, a very lucky meat puppet” (Pinker); our universe is just an
accident, life a spontaneous consequence of that accident proceeding mechanistically
to a meaningless end devoid of any purpose. And doctrine: free will does not
exist; the spiritual does not exist – it is just emotion; there is no right or
wrong; there is no absolute – everything
is relative, only your, or my, truths exist – there are no “T” Truths except
these! It is the aim of this essay to examine the integrity of this “H” House.
In earlier days when the House of God was powerful it
was a brave man who was an atheist, but since about the 19th
century, the rise of science and the atheistic “isms” (Darwinism, existentialism,
post-modernism, relativism, materialism) the tables are turned. Now to hold a
belief in “G” God and/or special meaning requires courage – atheism dominates
academia in particular. Atheists like to believe that they occupy the high
moral, intellectual ground – they see themselves as honest, non-hypocritical
and brave – their position as the only intellectually credible one. They claim
to not fear death and not be in need of comfort and shelter like those poor,
timorous religious souls. But they tend to be libertarians (many of the names
mentioned above responsible for more than their fair share of multiple marital
and family betrayals) and they like the idea of guilt-free pursuit of fun – if
it feels good do it – no need to suffer guilt for your infidelities and
betrayals. The House of Disbelief in many ways appears every bit as much an
attempt to achieve comfort as does the House of God. In the case of the House
of Disbelief it is a place to dwell free of the fear of judgement. The House of
Disbelief offers relief from the guilt we all carry from living a life, and shelter
from the irksome notion of an all-knowing God.
Denial of Truth was always easier than searching for
it, but religion has made denial easy by putting up such straw truths, gods and
meanings. Most a-theists are actually anti-theists. Atheism would not exist at
all without religion – being entirely a reaction to religion’s incredible
doctrines. Atheism has not occurred naturally (i.e. by looking at life) in any
society – whereas religion occurs naturally in just about all. Most
civilisations have some spiritual beliefs as a result of experiencing our
numinous world and the mysteries of life. Atheism arises when the old beliefs of
theism are revealed by advancements in knowledge as absurd. The closer the experience
with religion’s absurdities often the greater the reaction – many strident
atheists come from fundamentally strict religious upbringings (Shermer, Russell
and Adams from above, for example) – reacting to the fears, guilts and incredible
doctrine they have been force-fed when young. Their books and writings are
polemical rather than letting their evidence and the logic and reason of their
arguments speak for themselves – agendas are obvious and everywhere.
Atheism, then, is a reaction and a shelter, not a fearless
search for truth – very much a “H” House as any religion. Atheists do not want
to find “G” God but have a vested interest in religion’s fallible gods because
they are so easily slaughtered – they have a vested interest in not going any
further into the “God question” than religions’ straw man/gods. Many academic
atheists have also forged their reputations and/or their academic power-bases
on successfully attacking the old Judeo/Christian god. So, atheism and religion,
both, have vested interests and are not honest attempts to explore the
mysteries of the numinous and find any truths.
Philosophy, for so long seen as a footnote to Plato,
has now become instead the handmaiden of science. The scientific method is
sound, but have the arguments from sound science been soundly made in
themselves? The House of Disbelief has rarely been identified, let alone subjected
to examination – maybe its certificate of occupancy should be revoked in order
to protect the poor souls who might be in danger within? Let’s examine it as we
did the House of God. What are the pillars supporting the House of Disbelief?
There is no God, and life has no special meaning or
ultimate purpose because :-
·
The
world is dangerous, random and capricious – therefore meaningless.
·
Bad
things happen to good people (and good things to bad people).
·
The
scale of the universe is so huge that we are individually meaningless.
·
Science
has disproved God.
·
The
multiverse.
·
Who
made God?
·
The
dubious psychological basis of much religious belief.
·
Bad
things have been done in the name of God.
·
The
Bible is flawed.
·
There
are bad religious people.
·
Humans
have conducted holocausts.
·
God’s
death and funeral have been widely reported in academia.
·
Everything
is relative – there are no Truths, only your or my truths.
·
Evolution
disproves God.
·
We
are just a survival mechanism for a bunch of genes.
·
Deformities,
diseases, injuries disprove any meaning in life.
·
The
problem of evil.
·
The
idea that we are evolving spiritually is “a tasteless joke” – man is a wolf to
man.
·
There
is only one life so an early death disproves meaning and God.
Let’s examine these pillars one by one :
All things definitely are not, as religion would have
it: “bright and beautiful”. The natural world is more, as Shakespeare noted:
“red of tooth and claw” – literally – some are killed by sharks, bears, lions,
and hippopotami. Some by creatures less majestic: spiders, viruses and
bacteria. Some people die randomly in nature’s forces: earthquakes, floods and
other natural catastrophes. But, is such a sometimes violent, dangerous and
capricious world therefore necessarily meaningless?
For some, it is beyond meaningless, if life has any
design at all, it is evil :
“But if intent be truly manifest, then
what can we make of our universe – for the scene is evil by any standard of
human morality.”
-
“Rocks
of Ages”, Stephen Jay Gould. (Pp.205-206)
Life is definitely not a safe ride in a zoological
theme park, but does this negate or enhance meaning? Nature can thrill us as
well as kill us, simultaneously charm and challenge us, but many would argue
the challenges and dangers that accompany the beauties of nature, far from
removing meaning, increase it – ask any mountaineer, flier, surfer, diver,
skier, sailor, walker, bike-rider, traveller. A meaningful life most often involves
some risk, some challenge, some excitement – a little adventure, therefore some
danger. All lives, must come to an end. Those who think the purpose of life is about
physical survival are on an ultimately futile quest.
Lives can end, as we are informed in Eliot’s The Hollow Men, with “a bang or a
whimper”. Does an end with a whimper give more meaning to life? So why would an
end with a bang remove it? Losing a loved one to life’s dangers, its uncaring
neutrality, can make life appear – in our anger and our pain – hostile, even
“evil”. A young death always appears pointless, especially in the case of
sickness – viruses and bacteria are not awe-inspiring like a storm or beautiful
like a lion – just insidious. I will examine the question of young deaths later
under a pillar of it own – here I will just say that sickness, bacteria and
viruses, are an essential part of the natural world. Some of them help us (by
digesting our food) or by killing bugs hostile to us, but it is a neutral world
and some survive by living in our animal body and making us sick – some even by
eating our animal body. This is part of the natural selection process which evolved
our animal body (and continues to do so) – the mechanism by which the original
single cell organism evolved eventually into the amazing collection of strong
and vital animal life-forms we see around us today. This amazing process gives our
life greater meaning. What would the meaning of life be if there was no natural
selection of the most fit to survive, no creation through the selection of
superior random mutations, adaptions and abilities – if life were still the
original cell?
Random does not mean haphazard or meaningless. Random
mutations just allow any possibilities – to be tested for their “fitness” – it
is the key to the universe’s amazing creativity. The universe’s creativity is,
in turn, the key to its special meaning. Life, in the words of theoretical
physicist Paul Davies, seems “programmed to make interesting things happen” –
to be creative. The universe is seemingly “uncaring” to the point of being
“evil” to the subjective observer, but is in fact relative, random, impartial
and neutral – it is how evolution – the relative universe’s amazing creativity,
works. There can be no creation in any absolute.
The purpose of anything is what it does. Life does something,
life does creativity – life has purpose. If life were heaven, a ride through an
all things bright and beautiful theme park, it would create nothing. Neither
God nor meaning are proven to be evil, or absent, in life’s immaculate process
of creation – quite the reverse. And, as I will examine in Essay 3, animal
bodies are not the only thing being created and evolved.
Just as some people lose faith in life’s special meaning
(or any Divine) through its neutrality and dangers, some lose faith when contemplating
the fact that bad things can appear to be specifically targeted at good people (especially
this is happening to them – the situation presented in the Book of Job) and/or
good things apparently targeted at bad people by life.
When people lose God and meaning because “bad” things
are happening to good people and good things happening to bad people, they are
saying in effect that for life to have meaning it should be, at one and the
same time, heaven for good people and hell for bad people – to have a
metaphysical override. They are expecting a weird thing that would itself make
a nonsense of life – everybody would, of course, be “good”. On top of removing
its challenges (as discussed above) life would definitely become a meaningless
ride through a theme park – it would in fact be heaven, not life – and life’s
amazing creativity would be lost. Especially its creativity of Self.
Strangely, it is this weak and nonsensical pillar – the
sometimes “unfair” distribution of “good” and “bad” events in life – that most
people stand under in the House of Disbelief. We tend to see life as some sort
of a reward, we speak about life as “winning the lottery”, and we expect that
this life should proceed accordingly. When we find that it is a challenge, an
opportunity – not a reward, we lose faith in it having any meaning. But it is
especially troubling when the good suffer. However, consider that good times
most often bring out the bad in us (decadence, greed, laziness) and bad times
often bring out the good (strength, courage, generosity, compassion, great
art). If good people were denied bad
times, they will also be denied the opportunity to find out how good they can
be – to achieve what they are capable of artistically and personally (and the
corollary of course – should “bad” people be denied good times and the finding
out of how bad they can be?) Great art and music often come from times of
strife. The 200 or so years of the Renaissance in
Now I’m not saying that there is no meaning without
adversity, but I am saying that adversity definitely does not remove life’s
meaning. Some suggest it is even a necessary ingredient for growth. This from
psychologist Jonathan Haidt:
“Adversity
may be necessary for growth because it forces you to stop speeding along the
road of life, allowing you to notice the paths that were branching off all
along, and to think about where you want to really end up.”
-
Jonathan
Haidt (P.144 The Happiness Hypothesis).
Again, should good people be denied the opportunity
for this growth?
Haidt backs his theory up by referring to several
studies. In summarising sociologist Glen Elder’s lengthy study in this area :
“We
can say, however, that for many people … adversity made them stronger, better,
and even happier than they would have been without it.”
- (ibid, P151 - referring to Elder 1974 & 1998.)
So, not only do challenges brought on by hard times
and suffering not remove special meaning from life, they can even be an agent
for growth. Life works immaculately to reveal the self by “good” and “bad” things
happening to both good and bad people indiscriminately. Self revelation opens
us up to being able to obey the ancient dictum to: “Know Thyself”. I will examine this mechanism of life more fully in
Essay 3 but, for here, who could argue a “meaningful” life is one that would
deny people the opportunity to be what they are capable of being, of doing what
they are capable of doing – both good and bad – and coming to know it?
If, on the other hand, the only meaning you can glean
from life is the fun and joy of living, consider that our enjoyment is greatly
enhanced by the struggles and dangers rather than removing it – all holiday is
no holiday. L
Some lives are, of course, terrible and/or short (and
nothing in these essays is an argument that we should not help each other when
times are hard) but the speculation of meaninglessness for all life because sometimes
our lives are hard and/or short is based on another speculation – that there is
only one life with an animal body for the human being. I will examine this speculation
later under another pillar of disbelief. For now, this is life – neutral to
good and bad people alike, and creative because of it – it is definitely not
heaven. Time enough for flopping about in the Elysium fields – eternity even?
·
The scale of the universe is so huge that
we are individually meaningless.
We are individually insignificant in comparison to
the universe therefore so is any meaning our life may have. This argument
against meaning is being heard more frequently as we discover the vast scale of
our universe. Just when we get our head around Carl Sagan’s analogy of the
number of suns in the universe :
“the
total number of stars in the universe is greater than all the grains of sand on
all the beaches of the planet Earth” (Cosmos
P. 196)
someone comes along and tells us that there could be
more than one universe! Indeed, it has been posited that there may even be an
infinite number of universes – a multiverse (I will examine the multiverse idea
as a separate pillar). So, we not only lose our rather comfortable Old
Testament place at the centre of everything, we discover we are insignificant
to the point of meaninglessness? Who has not felt an existential flat spot, a
total insignificance, as the head-spinning vastness of the universe(s) is
contemplated?
But, does size matter? Studies reveal that minute
events, like the beat of a butterfly’s wing, can have unpredictable consequences
which go on for ever. In the realm of ideas, humans can even exert massive change
with just a single thought – some thoughts retain their power to change for
endless generations – will the repercussions of the thoughts of Plato, Socrates
and Aristotle ever end? Big world-, or even universe-changing, ideas stand on
the shoulders of a smaller thought(s). Individually we can, and have, made
large differences we are not even aware of – significance is not contingent on
awareness. Ideas contained in Earth broadcasts which have penetrated into space
may have made changes in the broader universe. Microbes or human DNA on
spacecraft may make, or have made, even physical changes in the universe.
Some feel that its very largeness speaks of the
accidental nature of the universe, of arbitrariness – or some inefficiency on
the part of any creator? Why so much space, why were so many uninhabitable therefore
meaningless worlds made just to make this one possible? This from scientist Dr.
Rodney Holder:
“Contrary
to our intuitions, it turns out that the universe needs to be the vast size it
is in order for man to exist. This is the size it inevitably reaches in the
14,000 million years which it takes to evolve human beings….A universe endowed with the mass of a single
galaxy has enough matter to make a hundred billion stars like the sun, but such
a universe would expand for only about a month. Thus the argument that the
vastness of the universe points to man’s insignificance is turned on its head –
only if it is so vast could we be here.”
(“Think” – periodical of The Royal
Institute of Philosophy. Issue 12, P. 53)
So, the size, complexity, and vast age of the
universe(s) as now revealed by astronomy and physics is no impediment to
special meaning in individual human life. It is not even fatal to a belief in a
God, only fatal to the ancient “everything-created-in-6-days-6000-years-ago”
god created by our pre-scientific ancestors – the parochial god they created,
which was necessarily as miniscule as their understanding of the universe. No,
that the universe has been revealed to be of immense size is not a secure
pillar of the House of Disbelief.
Our sciences have revealed much about our physical
experience. Astronomy and cosmology have established not only the huge size of
the universe but determined the initial conditions at the moment of creation
and the subsequent mechanistic processes that formed the universe to the point
we are at now. Geology has established the physical history, composition and
age of our home planet; Biology has shown us the intricacies of animal and
plant life and how it has evolved; Physics has revealed our natural laws and
forces and is delving into the sub-atomic; Chemistry has explained the
elements, molecules and the power of their combinations; Mathematics, “the
language the universe was written in”, has been the handmaiden to all this.
Many scientists feel that some of the sciences have been unified (like physics
and chemistry for example) and even that all the sciences are on the verge of
unification into a grand Theory of Everything.
But even as we are settling many of the “hows” of our
physical universe we are opening a world of even more amazing things – quantum
physics being a good example with its talk of parallel universes, extra
dimensions and its recognition that consciousness may be able to directly
influence the behaviour of sub-atomic particles – and the implication that
matter may be primary to consciousness. Instead of closing God down to a
smaller and smaller “god of the gaps” we are opening, in the new mysteries,
grander ideas of what a “G” God might be (and meaning and purpose to life). We
have a vision of the universe and humanity’s possible place in it that was not
visible to our pre-scientific ancestors who constructed our present “g” gods in
their own image. And of course science, by definition, has nothing to say about
the ever-increasing philosophical “whys” that tag along behind their “hows”.
Some scientists personally have a greater belief in God and special meaning the
more they learn – like the respected scientists John Polkinghorne (who took up
the priesthood after being a particle physicist) and the above-quoted
Rodney Holder (who did the same after being an astro-physicist).
For many, however, it is the reverse. Why do so many
intelligent people lose a belief in God with greater scientific understanding?
Did they really believe that religion’s six-day-creating, man-god of the
ancients was the one and only possible God, and that “his” death at the hands
of their sciences must necessarily lead to the death of their belief in any
possible Divine – and special meaning as well? Here we pass into the murky
waters of the psychology of disbelief, covered in the discussion of it as
another pillar of disbelief. Suffice it to say here that the God of the
ancients is dead, slain at the hands of science and buried gleefully by its
camp-follower, Philosophy. Science is still short of its all-unifying Theory Of
Everything, but most intelligent people know it is closer to it than the Old
Testament and its creation myths – for a long time the T.O.E. of the Western
world.
Many believe that science has, if not killed all
possibility of a “G” God, reduced God to insignificance – at best a “god-of-the-gaps” – ever diminishing as science
closes the gaps. It has certainly marginalised religion whenever religion has
ventured into science and proffered its own explanation of the “hows” of life –
for instance Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. However, religion and God –
continually confused – are not one and the same thing. A good example of this
point is the case of Galileo, seen as one of the classic clashes between
science and God. The fact that orthodox religion took 400 years to forgive
Galileo for being right (when his excommunication was annulled in the 20th
century) was a victory over religion and its “g” god, not God.
Both scientists and those engaged in the spiritual should
stick to their own knitting because they have non-overlapping magisteria (an
idea well expounded by Stephen Gould in “Rocks of Ages” under the acronym NOMA)
and should not intrude into each others’ domains (no creationism or intelligent
design in science classrooms, and no scientists using their status as
scientists to promote their personal philosophical offerings – i.e. life is
meaningless). Perhaps the greatest scientist of all, Albert Einstein, when
discussing the complementary nature of knowledge said: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
His point is well made if we allow religion here to represent the spiritual (I
make the point elsewhere that religion is not really about the spiritual but
about the physical – its followers hope for bodily resurrection, physical
salvation/survival – it is largely a Darwinian organisation).
Humanity has two sides, the physical and the
spiritual (Essay 3 explores this assertion more fully), and we will never
approach “T” Truth (truths that are universal for humanity) until we go in
search of it with an understanding of both. Science can never have an
understanding of the non-physical because, by definition, it is a study of the
physical. Einstein’s point is that the quest for insight into the human
condition is best tackled together because if we look honestly at our condition,
we can see that we are of body and soul, not body or soul.
To conclude, science has not disproved God, but it
has disproved religions’ gods.
Some have attempted to explain away the unnatural
order of this universe (“unnatural” because all should naturally be chaos) and
the mystery of life occurring therein by constructing a multiverse theory.
Multiple universes are inferred as possible from some observations in quantum
physics, and the logic flows that if there are indeed an infinite number of
universes then this universe and the sort of life we find in it was bound to
exist given the infinite number of opportunities presented – a bit like the old
furphy that if an infinite number of monkeys were placed in a room with an
infinite number of typewriters one of them would eventually type Shakespeare’s
entire opus! [This was actually tried on a smaller scale by one researcher and
the chimps managed to defecate on just about all the keyboards and only managed
to begin on what may have turned out to be an infinite number of “ssss’s” had
they not been curtailed]. In other words, thousands of millions of billions of
universes, each containing in turn thousands of millions of billions of stars,
planets and moons have had to be created to explain away the mysteries of this
one. Rather untidy, and leaving aside the giant “if” (no observations of a
multiverse have ever been made), one suspects that Ockham’s razor [the
observation that all great scientific truths are simple and we should be
suspicious of theories that need unnecessary complexity to support them] would
deal with it somewhat harshly.
Even if we allow a multiverse for a moment, just to
consider its implications, the mysteries are not erased only multiplied – even
a designer-god still breathes – other (or all) universes in a multiverse may in
turn each contain unnatural spiritual life seeing as how it exists in this one.
If it can happen (I present evidence later that it has), it most likely will happen
wherever it can. Or a creator-God could possibly just instil suitable universes
with the necessary ingredients for life – which universes may have indeed been
accidental and self-occurring just as this one may have been. While the Old
Testament designer god is dead at the hands of science, a much more amazing God
is possible.
Until the existence of life, and then the existence
of the spiritual are explained away in this universe, a multiverse only has the
potential to compound the theory of meaninglessness’ problems. Again, the only
god demolished by multiverse theory is the old, tribal, 6-day one.
·
Then who made God?
I was advised by (leading Australian Skeptic and
atheist) Phillip Adams that he ceased to believe in God when his mother
couldn’t answer a question he posed as a six-year-old: “then who made God?”
This is the first-cause question – made much of in Bertrand Russell’s polemic “Why I am not a Christian”, and a
question that continues to vex many. It is a question which naturally flows
from religions which propose that everything was “made”.
Our relative-world animal minds can have no
experience of, therefore no understanding of, any absolute. But in this life,
everybody who lives an average span will encounter the numinous sometime (I
will argue this point out fully in Essay 3). Because we are creatures of the
relative, when we encounter the numinous and contemplate the Divine, the gods
we construct are puny imaginings of this relative world – gods made in our own
image. While we have constructed many “g” gods, we are nowhere near
understanding the nature of God.
Does this mean that we should not bother trying to
approach God?
No. It is our present feeble imaginings of God – and
what “He” wants – that is causing many of our problems. Being humans – I will
argue spiritual beings with animal bodies – we will always attempt to approach
God, and I argue further: firstly, that we can do better at contemplating the
Divine; and secondly, that the dangers our present, separating, parochial gods
place us in dictates that we should try. Our technological evolution has
advanced way beyond our spiritual evolution – we have atom bombs in the hands of
countries controlled by stone-age religions.
So, what do we have on God so far? Religions of the “B”
Book think they have chapter and verse on God. However these primitive and
childish gods made the universe, and are vulnerable to the childish question
“Who made God?” How has philosophy fared
with their speculations on the God question? A.N.Wilson feels that after Hume’s
speculations on the nature of God it is pretty much a waste of time.
“devastating
…… the disturbing question to which there could not possibly be any answer.”
(p.24 “God’s Funeral”).
Hume (“Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”) posits
that God may be a plurality because of some evidence of the plurality of the
universe, suggesting pluralities of intention and designs :
“behold
then the theogony of ancient times brought back upon us”
(ibid. p.168).
And that God might not even be the Creator :
“For
ought we know, a priori, matter may contain the source, or spring, of order
originally, within itself”
(ibid. p.146)..
Speculations must remain just that and can never be
“devastating”. But even if we allow Hume’s radical (for their time) posits for
a moment, they do not demolish God and special meaning. Nor necessarily force
us into agnosticism as
“a
total suspension of judgement is here our only reasonable resource”
(ibid. p.24 ).
Speculations can also be met with other speculations,
try these: God may be a “plurality” – God may be us, God may be everything – only
ancient pre-scientific religions insist otherwise. Religion needs God to be a
“Him” so that “He” can be controlled (through sacrifice of animals originally –
now through praise, fear and flattery). Hume may have been on the right track,
matter may contain the “source of order originally, within itself”. After
Einstein and his beautiful equation E=mc2, we know that matter does
contain Hume’s “source, or spring” (the energy) – and vice versa. Put simply, matter
can spring from energy – and vice versa. When some of the original singularity
of energy transmuted into matter it caused the Big Bang (like the reverse of an
atomic explosion where energy is released from matter). Because we know that
energy cannot be created or destroyed, then that energy must have always
existed – be absolute. That energy is what we try to describe when we use the
word “God”.
So we have met Hume’s “devastating” speculation of
God not being the “Creator” with another – God did not make the world, God is
the world. Russell’s childish question of “Who made the world?” is also
answered – not everything must be created, some things always are – in one form
or another – energy can be neither created nor destroyed. And the other big
question of philosophy: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is also
addressed. The reason anything exists at all is because energy/God exists.
And consider the further implications: if all matter and
energy is God, or of God, and humans are of matter, have life energy (and I
will argue a spiritual individuation – our part of the Divine) then other people
are as close to God as we can come this side of the relative/absolute divide.
If we say we love God (or more commonly, unfortunately, fear God) maybe we
should treat each other a little better?
“Have I not said ye are Gods?”
(John
10:34)
Of course, other animals are of the original energy
as well – and should be respected as such. Other animals may also have
spirituality, but for the purpose of the exercise represented by these essays
it is enough to establish that the spiritual exists at all – in this case that humans
are spiritual beings.
Obviously religion’s gods are not looking too well
but, again, there is a great deal of difference from demolishing religious
dogma and demolishing God.
·
The dubious psychological basis of
religious belief disproves God.
Atheists state that God exists only in the wishful
thinking of the religious. Religion, they insist, is just a psychological crutch,
a comfort in a tough world – those who believe in God are weak and cannot cope
with the thought of death, oblivion, or our personal insignificance and the
lack of control over life. Leading sceptic Michael Shermer sees it this way :
“More
than any other, the reason people believe weird things is because they want to.
It feels good. It is comforting. It is consoling.”
(p. 273 “Why People Believe
Weird Things”).
Atheists like Shermer swarm the high moral ground
because they see themselves as having the intellectual integrity and courage to
face life and death without needing the comforting thought of God-the-Father
and life in the hereafter.
“We
[sceptics and scientists] seek
immortality through our cumulative efforts and lasting achievements; we too
wish that our hopes for eternity might be fulfilled.”
(p. 6 ibid.)
Pllll-ease! Atheists’ self-judged superiority stands
out in their literature – hic sic.
A lot of people are religious not because they
really believe, but because of the comfort – or because they calculatedly see
something like Pascal’s wager as a safer position (the notion that its wiser to
believe in religion’s god because the consequences of being wrong are minimal
for a believer but endless for an atheist) but many atheists disbelieve on
similarly specious grounds – because a God gets in the road of a good time
and/or they are carrying enough guilt to make the thought of a God an
intolerable burden. It’s amazing how many of the people I have mentioned as
heroes of atheism are into multiple marriages and/or are living the lives of a
libertine – with all the guilt of betrayed families and relationships that lifestyle
entails. These atheists still manage the high moral ground because they see
believers as weak (needing the comfort of a god). Atheists prefer the notion of
oblivion because they are (as they accuse the religious) in fear of the
alternative. But the psychological basis of atheism no more proves God that the
psychological basis of religion disproves God.
.
·
Bad things have been done in the name of
God.
Many lose faith in the existence of God and/or
special meaning because of the bad things done by religion. The number of
religious wars are many, and still happening today. Countless millions of
people have been, and are being, killed in conflicts detonated or intensified
by religion. The September 11th terrorists had the name of a god on
their lips as they killed themselves and thousands of innocent people. Does
this disprove God or prove that God is evil?
Bad things done in the name of God are not done by
God. Religion is man’s invention. You can tell a person by the religion they
practice but very little about God from that person’s religion.
Religion is an often brutal attempt by humans to take
the power of a brutal god to themselves. Consider the fate of William Tyndale. Tyndale
was the first man to print the Bible in English. This made the Bible accessible
to the English masses for the first time – taking from the Church its
previously considerable power as sole interpreter and keeper of the “word of
God”. A Bible people could read for themselves opened the Bible (hence the
Church) to criticism. On the prospect of people being able to read the word of
God for themselves Simon says :
“Thomas
More and John Fisher … reserved for themselves and men like them the luxury of
debating niceties of scripture, but in the prospect of ‘each one man to be a
church alone’ they saw the collapse of all theological authority; a time when
every man or woman, no matter how ignorant, would be presumptuous enough to
judge doctrine for themselves.
- Simon Schama, A History of Britain,
p.285
Tyndale was burned at the stake by the Church – a
brutal and Godless murder in retribution for his considerable and
well-intentioned efforts at making the Bible accessible to ordinary people. Like
the fate of Galileo, this is not a mark against God, but against religion. He
was not murdered by God but because he threatened the established power of
religion – much as Jesus’ revolutionary new understandings threatened the power
of the religion of his day. Religion killed Jesus, not “the Jews”, and religion
goes on killing – but does this say anything about God, or something about the
people believing in the sanctity of religious doctrines, and something about
the people doing the hating and/or killing?
There are many “t” truths, many religions. Most of
the bad things done by religious organisations (covering up paedophilia comes
to mind) are done to protect their Church. There is much competition between
different religions and between denominations within religions – for the power
that resides in the hearts and minds (and wallets) of humanity. Religion is
about power rather than about seeking Truth – all religions have their old “t”
truths which they seek to protect, to perpetuate. Bad things done by religion’s
ministers are hushed up because it damages your side’s credibility, its ability
to win the battle to be dominant – seen as more important than any damage done
to the occasional individual. Religions proceed as if life is a vast game – a
game to be won by converting the greater number to your side – a game to be won
by any means.
Religion, to be fair, has also done a lot of good for
human society – charity, medical care, fellowship, a moral constancy for
society, but, for the purposes of this examination, the facts are: bad
religion, while a significant hurdle for most people in the quest to approach the
notion of Truth, no more disproves God and special meaning any more than the
many good things done in the name of God proves them. Many confuse God with religion,
but they are separate – again, to disprove a religion or a religion’s god is
not the same thing as to disprove God.
And it must be remembered that secular ideologies
like Nazism and communism have killed as many people as religion. It’s ideology
that is the problem, and the temporal, vested interests which surround it – not
God.
·
The Bible is flawed.
The Bible (and the foundation books of other
religions) is the work of man and a very human document full of wisdom, stupidity,
truth, lies, love, hate, mythology, failed science, flawed history, useful (but
not unique) moral laws, parochialism, sexism, bigotry, sanctioned slavery,
fear, ethnic cleansing, righteousness, journalism and proselytising – to name
just a few.
The Bible is supposedly the work of divine
inspiration (“every dot and iota the word of God”) but it bears man’s
unmistakable stamp. There is a lot of human bathwater with the holy baby. God
did not send down the Bible on the wings of a snow white dove, Jesus did not
write it or even see a copy. It was written in many parts over many centuries
by many humans when scientific understanding and education were poor, then
selectively compiled from lots of available material (including many differing
gospels) centuries later by other humans who were building a religion at the
time. More of the same “words of god” was left out as went in.
In it is, however, the story of a great man with the secrets
to a happy life: “Thou shalt love one another”; “Turn the other cheek”; “Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you”; “Love your enemies for anyone
can love their friends”. Words that contain “T” Truth – words that I suspect of
Divinity whether Christ was a miracle-worker, the Jewish messiah, virgin-born, the
Trinity, transubstantiated into a wafer – or not. Unfortunately, in the Bible,
as I discuss in the first essay, is plenty of all too human material obscuring the
light of Jesus under a bushel of dross. The nonsense of the Bible and the
incredibilities derived from it in the way of doctrine and dogma are the cause
of the collapse of the House of God into the stunted rump of fundamentalists
and semi-fundamentalist evangelicals it is today.
But the Bible is not the only evidence there is for a
“D” Divine or special meaning – as I will discuss in essay 3. The lack of
veracity in the Bible is not a substantial pillar for the House of Disbelief.
·
There are bad religious people.
There sure are. Some of them even high office-bearers
in religious organisations. Some of them are paedophiles, rapists, murderers,
adulterers, and things too weird to have names. All of these people are mad,
bad and dishonest – they are either really atheists or extremely stupid. There
are also many good religious people.
Good and bad religious people prove nothing about God
one way or the other, just that there are good and bad people. Again, religion
is of humans, not God.
·
Humans have conducted holocausts.
Best expressed by Primo Levi: “If there is an
Rather than cease to believe in God and meaning in
life because some humans can do murderous, evil things we should rather be
afraid that God may cease to believe in us? But before we draw conclusions
about the human race, the existence and/or nature of God, or the possibility of
special meaning it should always be remembered that the Nazis were beaten by
humans. Millions of innocent people offered and lost their lives, their health,
their sanity, their futures – under conditions of utmost bravery and often
lonely, unwitnessed heroism – so that bad should be beaten and good prevail. To
believe Levi is to forget that and them. Lest we forget.
The majority of humanity was appalled by, and rejected,
the Holocaust. This fact reflects on the nature of humanity. I say the real nature
of humanity is love. How do I justify this? Many people emerged from the Second
World War and other wars with psychological damage. Not one of them emerged
with this damage because of good things they did; not one emerged with this
damage because of missed opportunities to do evil – not one! Think about it a
while. It goes against man’s nature, conscious and unconscious, to do evil.
Evil is damaging to the human conscious and unconscious, to the human spirit.
Why?
More about the “problem of evil” under its own pillar
below.
.
·
God’s death and funeral have been widely
reported in academia.
Most secular academic institutions are atheistic to
the bone. And quasi-academic organisations like the Skeptics Society have God
as an important, although supposedly secondary, target. Has the intellectual
weight of their shot killed God? Should God be allowed a decent but definitive
burial by popular intellectual acclaim?
What definitely has been killed and interred by the
academic literature (A.N.Wilson’s previously quoted “God’s Funeral”, Richard
Dawkins neo-Darwinist series of books, Hitchen’s “God is Not Great” are good
examples) is any chance of rational intellectual belief in fundamental
religious dogmas and doctrines like original sin (derived from the myth of the
Garden of Eden) for example. But as for actual, tenable proofs of God’s
non-existence in the literature there are none. Ideology as rabid as any
religion is evident in many of the publications and lashings of atheistic
proselytising. Most appear more interested in gaining converts for their side
in the game, like any religion, as if, previously mentioned, the search for
truth was a team sport for the greater glory of only the winning supporters
rather than a process of enlightenment which could help us all move forward
together as a species. In the preface to “Blind Watchmaker” Dawkins states
openly :
“You
have to become an advocate and use the tricks of the advocate’s trade…Certainly
it [the book] seeks to inform, but it
also seeks to persuade.” (p.xiv).
Nobody should presume that academia is solely about
the search for the golden Truth. Truths can be uncomfortable, and can destroy
power and comfortable tenures that are based on one idea (often rehashed in
many publications). To be fair to academia, it is understandable why childish,
uneducated, dogmatic, fundamentalist, quasi-scientific beliefs (on creation,
for example) engender such fear and loathing within the breasts of people who
have spent a lifetime gaining rigorous scientific knowledge, like Dawkins
(biology). But to make presumptuous claims about solving all life’s mysteries,
as Dawkins manages to do shows desperation and a desire to goad – which only hampers
a search for some light rather than heat.
Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” and Christopher Hitchens’
“God is Not Great” claim to be addressed at the evils of religion and its
theories like “Intelligent Design”. Both books are effective polemics against
the various Houses of God – but they also claim to have demolished any Divine,
special meaning and any trace of evidence of the spiritual in the human
equation just by defeating religion and their ancient doctrines. Humans since
they have had consciousness have had a sense of the numinous in life, and an
understanding of the spiritual. If Dawkins and Hitchens and their neo-Darwinian
compadres really want to defeat the present, dangerous religions as they claim,
the best way to do it may be to search for an authentic “G” God which is more
likely to destroy religions’ straw “g” gods than their own invective – however entertaining
it is? But I suspect that the grim fun they get from slaughtering the
slow-moving sacred cows of the dim-witted and/or fearful is their real aim.
But Skeptics Inc. do have their role – they have some
useful truths and do a vital job for the community on dangerous sects and
pseudo-historians (like the Holocaust-deniers for example), and less dangerous
spoon-benders. But capital “S” Skepticism tends to be as full of fear and
loathing as Fundamentalism is, as I have mentioned previously, often in
reaction to a family background of Fundamentalism or orthodox religion that
many leading sceptics share (Michael Shermer and Phillip Adams for examples).
Skepticism is a reaction before it is a search for truth.
Suffice it to say that nothing has been proven by academia
or “S” Skepticism in their battle to dispose of God, special meaning and
ultimate purpose, except that intellectual power is no guarantee against the
pull of the psychology of ideology. Their only lasting monument is not a divine
headstone but an increasingly large number of people floundering between the
often annoyingly, smugly ignorant, House of God, and the equally annoying, often
smugly superior, House of Disbelief. People who are not only floundering but
who are all too frequently drowning in a sea of meaninglessness – trying to
buoy themselves with alcohol, drugs or frothy-feel-good-dissolve-in-a-crisis
New Age religions – or to distract themselves with materialism.
There is also a post-modern, relativist pillar to the
House of Disbelief :
Post-modern Theory states that everything is relative
– there are no “T” Truths (except this).
We live in a relative world. In the beginning there
was an absolute singularity of energy. As stated above, the relative was born when
this absolute singularity of energy converted/transmuted into matter causing
the Big Bang. Energy is a unity, but matter is separate – allowing the relative
– this and that became possible, here and there, and now and then. Individual matter
meant separation which meant space which meant time. So far pretty mechanistic,
but then a miracle happened – somehow into this mechanical process came life.
Somehow life became reproducing life – and you and me became possible. And the
miracles didn’t stop there, somehow life became sentient – and your idea and my
idea became possible. Your ideas and my ideas meant your and my truths became
possible – relative truths were possible.
So, leaving aside a consideration of all the (miraculous
for now) “somehows”, is this necessarily the end of the possible existence of
Truth? Must all be relative in a relative world?
I don’t think so. Some things remain True for all of humanity
– these I refer to when I use the word “T” Truth – things that are true for
everybody all the time. “Things” such as the above process – which I might not
have exactly right, but the correct process – whatever it was/is – is the
Truth. The Truth has implications about the existence of any special meaning in
life – which in turn has implications about how we should go about living it to
enjoy the experience/opportunity to the utmost.
For example?
It is a Truth that all humans seek to be happy,
rather than just seek to be. Now what are the Truths about how to achieve true
and lasting happiness for humanity? It is my observation (my truth if you like)
that the only way to achieve lasting happiness is to come to know the self truly
– and to come to know that you can love that self. While all humans may seek
happiness, but they often go about it in unsuccessful, even counter-productive
ways like money, power and/or fame – the happiness we seek, it often takes us a
lifetime to learn, is contingent upon another Truth – the human need for self
love. How we go about acquiring self-love is a result of our own perceptions,
our own truths, but the fact that we need it and it drives many of our behaviours
is a Truth. I have met plenty of people who are going about the getting of love/esteem
in inefficient and/or inappropriate (even “evil”) ways, and most do not
understand what is the real motivations for their actions – but I have met none
who do not need love.
Now, is that just my truth or the Truth? It is
important for us to decide to enjoy the experience/opportunity that life is. I
will examine happiness more fully in essay 3.
And there are other Truths. While I will argue in
essay 3 that we – our selves – are spiritual beings, we do have animal bodies which
have animal drives and needs, and genetic imperatives. Not many would disagree
that these latter drives are Truths – Darwinian Truths to do with our animal
bodies – because of the amount of empirical evidence available. The first part
of the statement that we are spiritual beings is more open to debate – it is
either the Truth or my truth (albeit shared by many others). These essays are
about exploring for special meaning in life and I will consider the evidence
for the existence of the spiritual more closely in essay 3. Suffice it here to
say, it is a Truth that the universe is a creative place. The universe creates
through evolution and is evolutionary in both a physical way and a spiritual
way – our physical bodies and our spiritual selves are some of its creations. This
I will argue is a Truth rather than my truth – as is the fact that our self is
not our body. Life demands that we decide, that we choose our truths – and the
truths which we adopt create our selves. The existence of free choice is
anathema to the House of Disbelief, but the observable fact that some of us
choose to obey the ancient dictum to “Know Thyself”, and some don’t, is part of
the evidence for the existence of free choice.
To conclude, the relative universe has “T” Truths and
we have our own “t” truths. The existence our truths, our gods, our meanings,
our purpose does not remove Truth, God, special meaning or ultimate purpose.
·
Evolution disproves God.
Evolutionary theory well describes how
physical life proceeds, how our animal bodies evolve. Does this understanding
solve all of life’s mysteries – negating God and special meaning? Many neo-Darwinians
feel that this is so. Richard Dawkins writes in “Blind Watchmaker” :
“This
book is written in the conviction that our own experience once presented the
greatest of all mysteries, but that it is a mystery no longer because it is
solved.” (p. xiii).
A grand claim! But there is a vast difference between
removing the mystery of how animals evolve and removing the mystery of why
anything exists at all. Likewise, a vast difference between removing the
credibility of the primitive “g” god of the ancients, and proving there isn’t a
“G” God at all. And a vast difference between showing that the religious model
for the meaning of life is flawed and that there is no special meaning at all.
By page 205 of “The Blind Watchmaker”, Dawkins
does admit that mystery remains – even for him :
“we
still don’t know exactly how natural selection began on Earth”.
Natural selection, as well as being a mystery itself, has absolutely nothing to
reveal about the larger mysteries of initial creation. Even A.N. Wilson, who
feels he has interred God in “God’s Funeral”, gets around to admitting the greatest mystery :
“the
one question which Darwinism so dismally refuses to address: namely, how (let
alone why!) anything happens to exist at all. It is existence itself
which is surely the greatest of all mysteries”
(p.224. – brackets are author’s & author’s
italics underlined).
Physical evolution is the process of forming one part
of the human equation – our bodies. Our bodies are the result of cumulative
natural selection. There is much evidence (that I will explore in Essay 3) that
we are not our bodies – “we” are our selves, our souls, our spirits. The
mechanistic, physical process of body formation is hardly the answer of “the
greatest of all mysteries”, and “the ultimate explanation for our existence” as
claimed:
“cumulative
natural selection is the ultimate explanation for our existence”? (P. 392 op. Cit.)
I don’t think so Richard – there remain way too many
of your “vanished mysteries” in the human condition to support such a desperate
claim! Mysteries like compassion for genetic competitors, our appreciation of
non-Darwinian beauty and music, our understanding of the language of the
universe – mathematics, humour, shame and our spirituality, for example. Neo-Darwinians’
statement of having made that last enormous leap – establishing that we are
nothing more than our bodies – smacks of wishful thinking, arrogance, and
team-winning ideological fervour. They seem to think that have solved why stardust
(a) exists; (b) came to life; (c) evolved to the point of being able to observe
itself and further; (d) evolved beyond observing itself to become a creator
itself (genetic engineering). They have solved all these mysteries simply
because
Dawkins attacks William Paley’s (already discredited)
watchmaker “design” proof of God (proof of the existence of God through the
ingenuity of design evident in life, implying a divine creator, as the
existence of a watch implies a watchmaker). There is a difference between
demolishing one of the commonly tendered teleogical proofs of God from the past
and demolishing God altogether. If we allow that Dawkins does demolish Paley’s
design “proof”, other possible evidence of Creator/Gods – through design –
remain. Perhaps a better analogy than Paley’s watch in seeking evidence of God
in design would be the child’s toy made by Lego. The clever part of Lego and
the proof of it having a designer (and I’ll wager the key to its patent) is not
the objects (however elaborate) made by the pieces, but the idea behind the
piece – the Lego block itself and how it fixes together. Our Lego blocks – protons,
neutrons and electrons (and other sub-atomic particles), the energy uniting
them, and the way they formed organic material together is the level at which
the miracle of design has to be explained away by the likes of Dawkins.
I’m not tendering an argument for Intelligent Design
then tendering that as proof of the ancient god of the desert tribes (as many
do) just tendering some facts which don’t sit well with the usual neo-Darwinian
proof of life’s supposed spontaneous form from an accidental beginning – eventually,
and equally accidentally, producing Pinker’s “lucky meat-puppet”! I just
state that the lack of design is not satisfactorily proven for the idea of an
accidental universe to be established – even on the balance of probabilities.
An accidental universe is one of the foundation stones of the House of
Disbelief.
Evolutionary theory, then, while certainly good at
explaining how physical life – our animal bodies – evolved does not cut out the
possibility of a rational “G” God(s). Darwin himself felt that in his theory of
evolution he had discovered God’s method, the
“laws impressed on matter by the Creator”
(p. 458 The Origin of Species).