I've been kind of thinking about this recently, especially as I continue to think about religion generally, and the hypothetical conversation I might have with the Jehovah's Witnesses who occasionally come to our house (with whom I kind of enjoy speaking), and I have concluded that no, there is absolutely no way I could ever be religious again. This is not another attack on religion; all of these are personal and are not intended to discourage others' beliefs.
1) I simply do not have the capacity for blind obedience to an enigmatic authority. I'm one of those annoying belligerent people who ask "why?" all the time. Remember Imago from the song I examined a month or two ago? I'm basically him and Ivan Karamazov.
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Imago:
I can never submit to all the things you've said God
If you want me dead, I'm right here God
But fear is a funny thing God
In that it gives you the strength to resist just about anything God
And friend turns to enemy
So easily
When you defend your legacy with guilt
And talk of blasphemy
God
You know
You created a golden cage for you sheep
A stage too wide and deep for us to even see the play
But hey
You know what they say about catching the bird
But you can't make it sing?
You lose the bird the second it loses its wings
Just like I reckon you will lose your herd
To choirs of "I am, I am, I am"
And mountains and mountains of money and things! -- Pain of Salvation, Diffidentia
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2) The reward - I can see no reward, at least one that 1) doesn't exist here on Earth or 2) would not be considered a vice and therefore an unsuitable reward for supposedly good works. Imagine that Allah really did give his true faithful 72 virgins--after a life of chastity! Doesn't really make sense, as we could simply have that on Earth. Why would a being who encourages chastity and platonic love reward those with their opposite? Do we really all need to be good until Judgment Day, and then immediately afterward we can all be hedonists without consequence? What kind of system is this?
What about other things that I enjoy (aside from sex and heavy metal), like literature and philosophy, and even politics? In a static utopia, it would be absolutely impossible for politics to exist, but what about literature? I'm quite sure that in either of the two monotheistic metaphysical systems, Jesus/Allah would have eliminated any and all philosophers and writers who did not honor them. That means no Socrates, Plato, Camus, Aristotle, Sartre, Russell (definitely not Russell), or Heidegger. Geez, what fun is that?
I'm not even sure the popular idea of Heaven is how it's even described in the Bible, it is merely an amalgamation of what we project as our greatest desires (seeing family members again, lots of sex, and lots of lesbians). But on the family members part, no one can even decide if we even look the same as we did on Earth, and if that's the case, then how are we supposed to find each other in the first place? It also doesn't help that our deepest desires run entirely contrary not only to God's Will, but the entire Christian dynamic, and as I said before about Allah, it makes absolutely no sense for our reward to be what we want during our time on Earth.
There is one major problem with the Judgment Day cut-off, too: Shouldn't we always be good? Dostoevsky, speaking as Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, feared that without God, anything goes. But even with God, anything goes, albeit after Judgment Day. The goal should be to get us all to want to be good, even after Judgment Day. And are there other ways to be "good" outside of the religious system? Am *I* (me/the author) good?
3) It is the characteristic of the Judeo-Christian God and of what little I've heard about Allah that one must--in order to qualify for the "reward", you must first believe in them (either one). So I'm basically screwed every which way, even through both ears and my nose, because while someone could cry "Pascal's Wager!", what if one believes (as I do) that all religious systems rely on the same arguments and claims to their existence and are therefore of absolutely equal chance of being true across the board, making it impossible to choose?
I tried this thought experiment on my dad and it worked: Imagine that you have no prior knowledge, except that you could read. Imagine placed in front of you were a Bible, a Koran, and the Hindu Vedas (I could include more but this is headache enough). How could you choose between them?
In my own opinion, it's simply a blind crapshoot. I could pick one, and then get screwed by Zeus. Or Ra, or Damballah, or Quetzalcoatl. Pascal's Wager was no help to me!
4) This is an extension of 1: The nature of the revealed God. As you read especially the Bible, it becomes apparent that there are some people God just doesn't like. And this list of people God doesn't like eventually becomes rather long. And it becomes evident that God maybe likes only a few thousand people, perhaps even less as we narrow down how many people are actually good, let alone who believes in the 'correct' religion. This is a problem because there are now over 7 billion people on this planet, and we've become rather interconnected, which makes it much more difficult to justify prejudice. It becomes more and more impossible for God to sustain his prejudices, especially when the world becomes more rationalistic and respectful towards others. If at least some of us can learn to become tolerant, why can't God?
There is one reason why God can be intolerant after a millennia: The simplest answer is that he can afford to be because he is alone. But in my view, this answer is not true, as I will show. However, I think this answer is also quite intriguing.
God is off in some non-space observing the Earth--or, at least that's how people normally envision him. Despite how the world has changed in the last 500 years, God still believes that we are dependent upon him, yet he is not dependent on us. Therefore, as some Christians like to imply, God has no morality, and everything he does has absolute justification in his own mind regardless of the consequences to us; our "temporary" suffering is irrelevant in view of his "Master Plan." This means that God can still hate entire groups of people, and annihilate them without batting an eye, as we are mere ants under his magnifying glass.
I find this to be terrifying, and this God is one I don't believe anyone should worship even if it did exist. Such a God should be hated by us in turn, even if we are destroyed (we would probably be destroyed anyway, so we might as well go down with a fight). This further proves what I said on Facebook about the essential difference between believing in (a) (G)od(s) and worshipping said (G)od(s), as some gods are not to be obeyed for the good of humankind.
What gives me the right to place humanity above God? We are humanity! We have rational faculties, we are capable of similar (albeit significantly lesser) acts, we can love and hate! Aren't our ideas of gods and goddesses reflective of our own experiences--interpreted and mythologized (see Fandango by Pain of Salvation)?
God is therefore not alone. We created God (could be any (G)od(s)) to create us. We devised stories and legends detailing our origin and purpose involving entities far powerful than even we (for we are indeed powerful beings).
As long as we believe in God, God will exist, at least within us. As long as we exist, God will exist. And therefore God needs us as much, if not more than he needs us. And in truth, because God exists within our minds, we can change God.
You read that correctly. Did Christianity not change God from a tyrannical warlord who flooded the entire planet save a single family, commanded a man to murder his firstborn, and grant the death penalty for a multitude of bizarre offenses into a more forgiving (albeit equally sexist) entity? Did not Islam further transform God, and Mormonism even further than that (whether or not one respects Mormonism)? And what about--here comes another headache--all of the schisms within those monolithic traditions; each split off and defined God differently still. And what about the very first monotheistic religion, upon which Judaism and Christianity were based--Zoroastrianism?
Then who is to say that it would be impossible to further purge God of personality traits unbecoming of an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent being?
Just for fun, I'm going to lay out a few criteria I think any god or god-like being should meet in order for me to be inclined to follow him/her/it. I'm starting from scratch.
1) The god must be sexless, and therefore would be inclined to treat both sexes fairly in all regards. Even Socrates in the Republic agreed that the difference of anatomy between the sexes did not determine a difference of treatment generally. If Socrates can do it, so can God.
2) The god must not have been responsible for the creation of our world. This is pretty big for me, because as beautiful as our world is (or once was), there are particularly nasty things in it that I don't think quite fit the "benevolent" quality. I'm talking about things like earthquakes, Brazillian Wandering Spiders, and ebola, as well as certain parasites found in the Amazon river.
3) The god must understand rational discourse and the value of skepticism. It must appreciate the possibility of someone not believing in it, and respond not by murder but by presenting evidence, which would be as easy as a five-minute conversation. And the Christian god had to get all angry over it! How much violence could have been avoided if he just talked to some people? He must have had horrible PR...
4) The god must not favor any human faction over another; it must have equal respect for the well-being of all humans UNIVERSALLY. It must not advocate the annihilation of any group of people ever.
5) The god must be willing to offer advice to those who seek it.
6) The god must not care about the private lives of humans insofar as they are not hurting one another. The god must not say absolutely anything about sex. Unless it says that it's good for you. Hey! You know what? Let's turn Kurt Vonnegut into a god. That would be fun. Second thought, he probably wouldn't like that.
7) The god itself must not desire absolute totalitarian control, or feed upon those who worship it; it must not be avaricious and arrogant. This is the fatal flaw of all human-devised gods.
What's interesting is that the god I've devised doesn't seem to be much interested in being worshiped, especially taking into consideration the final clause. It is also hard to imagine any such being interfering with human affairs in the first place, unless it was avaricious or simply desired something in return. However, it would be strange to see a god in need of anything, unless that he was simply bored (like the aliens in the final Ayreon album).
Why else would any immeasurably powerful being care for us in the first place, if not out of the existential boredom that comes naturally with immortality? And wouldn't that being eventually get bored of us?
I've come back around to the reward again... If we were truly to get what we expressly desire--eternal life, albeit in an ethereal realm--would we not get bored? Our parents and grandparents would tell the same damned jokes and stories they told back on Earth, and finding new material would be impossible in a static world. In fact, even the most desirable reward would eventually become the most unbearable torment.
Heaven is Hell, and our temporality is the real blessing in disguise.
1 comment:
excellent essay!
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