On God, on Life and on Death
No man can say there is no God and be
right. In the sense that it is an
unknowable truth as to whether or not a creator exists. There is plenty of evidence to support the
statement that God exists, in the fact that we are here as is the
Universe. Something from nothing? That is a difficult puzzle to solve, try as
we may. That being said, there is the
very distinct and some would say, myself included likely probability that a
god, a creator exists and every human religion has absolutely no idea what the
truth of this God is. We have spent
millennia anthropomorphizing gods to elevate ourselves above the rest of the
planet. We make ourselves gods in God’s
absence, to justify our subjugation of the earth, its inhabitants and one
another. We beat our enemies, neighbors
and families over the heads with God to exert our will upon them and extract
their humanity for our consumption.
Arguing that humanity’s religions are bogus does not deny the existence
of God. Nor does accepting the existence
of God in any way legitimize any one of the 2,500+ (320 million if you include
all Hindu gods as individuals) gods created by man. These faces placed upon the unknown and
verified by testimonial thousands of years ago, only to be wielded by the
damaged, the frightened and the charlatan of today have been a useful
tool. Useful to good men and to wicked
men. They are used to enact great acts
of charity and violent massacres of innocents.
Yet still, despite the irrefutable evidence that these institutions are
of man and not divine, we continue to live, breath and sacrifice ourselves
under these labels, these supplications to OUR god. We even claim ownership of God, as if her
were a sports team. We pit God against
himself, fueling our lust for base satisfaction. We take words written down thousands of years
ago and perform idiomatic gymnastics with a translation of a translation of a
translation of a prosaic text and we wonder how that guy at the church next
door can POSSIBLY believe THAT when it is so clearly written right here
THIS. We claim one book can so fully
describe the ineffable that it is worth staking the lives of your family, the
nation and the world on its accuracy and truth.
I cannot refute one religion with the truth of
God. That which is unknown to us cannot
be used as evidence, despite the fact that its revelation would put to rest
forever the single greatest ideological force behind the attempted
self-annihilation of the human race. I
can only point out the tactic of the pre-historic through Iron Age practice of
using the absolutely bizarre and absolutely impossible as a means of evidence
of the improbable. The fact that we have
billions of people on this planet, the great majority of whom have faith and
they choose to ascribe every good thing that happens to them as an act of God
and every bad thing as bad luck seems suspicious to NO ONE?!? Why can’t good
things just happen because the Universe is a complex place and some things just
happen to favor us? Why can’t evil
things occur because either through will or circumstance, events occurred that
resulted in someone not experiencing the outcome they had desired? I think at some level, it is all just a
desire to have control over the chaos.
The Universe is an unmovable thing.
It includes everything, even our entirety. If we could just pray and there was a God
listening to our prayer and acting on our behalf, we could exert control or
influence over that which rules us. It
is the ultimate story of the slave wishing away the master. That is possibly why the story of the exodus
of the Israelites affects so many on such a visceral level. Most of us have no idea what the slaves of
history (and sadly some of the present) experienced as far as brutality, dehumanization
and abject hatred from their masters.
However, every one of us can picture being subject to another’s will and
their arbitrary dispensing of justice, injustice and humiliation as they see
fit. That is one of the key factors in
today’s politics. The problem with
participating in a democratic society is that you have to cede some autonomy
for the sake of security and prosperity, just like the fact that in business,
you must rely on others, whether employees, suppliers or customers, to earn
success. Conservatives have a difficult time ceding their autonomy to a
government which overwhelmingly favors their side of the aisle while at the
same time ceding all spiritual autonomy to an unseen, unheard from in 2,000
years, manufactured façade of a deity that has questionable origins, a terrible
track record as far as consistency is concerned and an unholy distain for
bacon. And that’s just the
Christians. Conservatives of all stripes
and denominations like to excuse their arrogance by relabeling it piety. They do not have a corner on the arrogance
market of course, it is just that left unchecked in their hands, their behavior
is completely unchecked. The radical
right can destroy programs designed to protect the most vulnerable citizens and
advocate devices of war meant to kill millions, mostly civilians and chalk it
al up to pithy scriptural quotes about sin, vengeance and smiting one’s
enemies. For all of liberals’ failings
(and they do have failings) the bloody hands fall squarely on the right side of
the aisle. Thank goodness all we need to
do is walk into a box and confess our sins to a pedophile and we can be
absolved, because, hey, at least I’m not as bad as THAT guy. The problem with just accepting that the
probable creator god has really authorized one and only one human text as the
true reflection of his will should be obvious.
If a god created all of us in this Universe, not just the humans, but
the inhabitants of the other inhabited worlds, the elements of the Universe and
the seeds of all life, we have to ask these questions: a) He created life, does
he demand death? B) Do we owe him prayers, adoration and murder on his
behalf? C) Is he watching/ does he care?
So much of this can easily be explained if we
acknowledge the only truth we can actually ascertain from the idea of the
unmoved mover/creator god: We exist. The
fact is that every other bit of subjective morality we read into our existence
and the existence of that which we perceive as “God” is something we have
derived in our attempt to make sense of the question of who we are and why we
are here. That should be a very
liberating concept to some. It turns out
that it is a very frightening concept to most.
We value our lives on an instinctual level. All life is hardwired to love itself, at
least to the extent that we procreate and make ourselves minor deities in the
act. However, more than our life, we value our conscious. It is not enough that our life, the organic
matter, our energy, our breath continues, floats into the ether, comingles with
the substance of those we love that went before us and is breathed in by those
we have left behind. We must have our
minds, our conscious, perhaps the least perfect piece of our existence. It is the most flawed part of the miracle
that is us, the part that is capable of sin and riddled with dishonesty and
jealousy and vice. The part of us that
craves to destroy our body in order to experience fleeting pleasures rather
than extend life to its fullest measure is immutable. We are willing to kill and take our own lives
for truths that exist only in our minds and we desire nothing more than to live
in these minds for an eternity. We have
been sold a story that we need to suffer the injustices of this life because it
will buy us happiness in the next one to come.
That is a great message to sell to a slave.
We are
convinced that if we can accept the existence of God, we must acknowledge the
supernatural. Apparently only atheists
don’t believe in ghosts. Why can’t God,
the creator be the creator of the natural world, one with rules, rules by which
we are all held? Why can it not be that
we are here, subject to the forces of the Universe, and that these are the only
rules actually given to us by God? Do we
need a sacred text to tell us that gravity exists? Apparently that would have been helpful in a
pre-Newtonian world. Still, is it the
sign of a malicious God to create and then jus let existence happen? Is it the sign of a disinterested deity to
create and observe, never intervening because that is against the rules he set
for himself? Does God require
prophesy? Does God require manifestation
on Earth to exist? God doesn’t need us
and now that creation has come into existence, perhaps we don’t need God. That doesn’t mean you can’t be grateful for
this amazing Universe and choose to be a great person because it makes the
Universe a better place to be. It also
doesn’t mean that you have a free pass to be evil because there is no such
place as hell. It just means that we
have to choose to do good things and avoid doing bad things for human reasons, hubris,
pleasure, gratification, security, conscience, guilt, shame, fear. We are ruled by these much of the time. They are our prime motivators. Perhaps it is time we stop crediting and
blaming God for the fact we have built a temple to humanity in his name. I don’t know.
Maybe I’ll just pray on it.
