The debate on God and Religion has existed for years and years. For the very large majority of time and for the very majority of people, there wasn’t much of a debate at all. There was one thing and that was that. The little amount of information that existed on the subject was held exclusively in the hands of a very few powerful people and scrutiny was the eighth deadly sin. After a long period of ignorance, another way of looking at the world emerged. And in just a short period of time, the availability, accessibility, and voracity of information cemented this new methodology as the standard of coming to know things. Yet those who long for the old days of ignorance and brutality won’t let go. What’s more, many others who accept this new way of knowing have a hard time coming to grips with its implications. Thus the debate remains to make me tired.
So, let me end it, here and now: God doesn’t exist. Not in the usual sense, anyway. If God exists, than she either intervenes or doesn’t. If she does interfere, then she is cruel and random in her prescription of wealth, power, and suffering. If she doesn’t meddle, then she isn’t a useful idea at all. Perhaps, then, God’s only valuable application is for judgment in the hereafter. But how are we to be certain of this? We can’t accept religious text as proof of an afterlife and the existence of paradise or damnation. Religious text is written and continually altered by humans. It is not written by Her. Though, the faithful may suggest the text of their brand to be inspired by God.
But religion is too much like the cola wars to be taken seriously. Over the entirety of human existence there have been thousands of different products containing God as the main ingredient. Most have been taken off the shelves. Like bad diet pills they just leave us malnourished and sick with a high risk of heart problems. Without them, most people stay obese and lethargic with a high risk of heart problems. Good nutrition and exercise is the known cure for a happy healthy life, but most are unwilling to do the work necessary to understand the regimen. Mostly because it’s not easy. Mostly, too, because it’s not socially acceptable. People hate happy and healthy humans. I hate clichés, but misery loves company. Instead of getting off their butts and searching for answers, it’s easy to accept the ones that are offered for free. That’s what religions do.
Most people keep the religious convictions passed on to them from their parents or family. Not because their folks were onto something, but because they haven’t bothered to critically and thoughtfully challenge the ideas objectively. Nor do most have the capacity or mental tools to do so. Ever wonder why religions are so big on families? That’s right. Families will do the indoctrinating for the religions. Now, religions don’t leave much to chance still. Most involve sacraments or rites of passage that reaffirm religious dogma throughout one’s life. And religions are smart, too. They understand key periods of development. They start at birth, of course, then they’ve been known to move in at 5 or 6 years, to combat governmental indoctrination, then at 12 to14 years, which just so happens to correspond with puberty and the many social implications at that stage. Furthermore, they all have marital ceremonies. This one is the biggie. This guarantees the next generation of customers.
Imagine if Coca-Cola asked communities to meet with representatives once a week. They’d read from the policy manual and tell fairytales of how Coca-Cola came to be. They’d negate anything that was injurious to the company lest they dissuade people from coming. After the local docent finished his analogous routine, everyone would stand and recite the company’s mission statement. After that, they’d pass a bucket around to relieve the burden of any loose change. Let me reiterate the idea of the mission statement. It’s so important that the company suggests you recite it or something along the lines of it when you wake up, before each meal, during your car ride, in the midst of your daily routine, before football games and particularly before you sleep. For, if you should not wake, your allegiance to the company will guarantee your place in Coca-Cola brand “Land-For-The-Dead”. A wonderful place where you can do anything your heart desires. Which of course was everything that was against company policy-depending on which CEO you served. You should note that even thinking of sipping a Pepsi will result in termination and torture. Royal Crown isn’t really a threat, but they are a tough conversion. When following policy results in negative sanctions, there’s no better explanation than, “Coke works in mysterious ways.” This is true. We’re often baffled why things don’t work the way the policy manual states. And, of course, there is no grievance procedure. Naturally, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and RC don’t do this whole routine…because it’s sick and wrong.
The moral is that religions are silly. But not “ha-ha” silly. They’re more “hundreds-of-millions-dead-and-oppressed-because-of” silly. I wouldn’t mind religion so much if they didn’t try to invade every facet of human existence. If they were there for personal reasons and didn’t attempt to commandeer the rule of law, I might even be attracted to it. However, they won’t stop spreading into every aspect of life. As a matter of principle, new membership is part of the mission statement. “Spread the word.” And I guess that’s my chief complaint. Stay out of my business. If you can’t manage that, at least have the decency to not stomp on the rights of others by infiltrating the government.
If that’s my chief complaint, my secondary one is that God doesn’t exist in the first place. Not in the usual sense, anyway. As stated earlier, she clearly doesn’t intervene. If she did, she is a vicious despot who preys primarily on the poor, on minorities, and on Africa. Don’t know what she’s got against Africa. If she gets her hands dirty for good, then she’s not very judicious in her job. She clearly hasn’t read the mission statement.
God might be useful in a very Platonic way. That is, fear of 1000 years of hardship after death for a life-time of transgressions. Yet there’s still no consensus on that one. All evidence we have now just leads us to believe that death has nothing to do with paradise and whole lot to do with worms. Since that’s the case, God’s not a very useful proposition.
The only way to make God functional is to define God in terms of math. In math, the closest thing to a God is probability. Probability takes every known variable into account to explain what has happened, what is happening, and will happen. Pretty omniscient, huh? The cool thing about probability is that anything is possible. People win the lottery all the time. It’s never me, it’s never you, but somebody wins. Probability keeps electrons in line. Probability keeps most of our cells from random failure. Probability literally keeps our feet on the ground. Probability is the reason every natural law works. Probability lends humans to progress. Probability tends us to disorder. Probability leaves everything to chance. Probability makes everything possible. And the best thing about probability is that it’s useful. Very useful. Even the existence of God is subject to chance. That makes probability more powerful than God. Even better than probability now, is probability in the future. Our ability to make predictions and explain how things work only improves with information and technology. And the beauty of the policies of probability is that they work like they say they do.
I guess one of the big fears with not having God is that chaos will take hold since everyone will realize that there is no physical apparition known as “the soul” and thus no life after death. This disturbs me. With God as the answer to every question, there isn’t any real reason to involve ourselves in this life. I suppose we should keep in line, but other than that, we’re just waiting for heaven. Without a God, things become a lot more interesting. If we accepted the idea that there is no God or heaven, then we might actually realize what’s at stake. We might actually value life a little more. It’s all we got. We might stop thinking of life as a game or the long line at the entrance of Disney World or Never-Never Land.
See, I think that there is no need for a God. I actually–prepare for some sap here–believe that the human race is a good enough reason to want to stick around. Sure, I think that our species is still pretty barbaric, but I am so mesmerized by what we’ve accomplished that I can’t wait to see more. In our imperfection, in our wild emotion, in our remarkable ability to screw things up, we’ve still managed to accomplish very divine things. People have a hard time paying bills on time or tying a shoelace, yet perform miracles on a regular basis. We believe in probability more than we believe in God but because of irrational fears we picked up in childhood, most of us are afraid to admit it. We’re afraid for our comfort, our livelihoods, and our safety. This is the sociological effect of religion. It is real, it is prevalent, and it is wrong.
If you believe in a pre-packaged God, then I’d be surprised if you’ve read this far. If you were unsure of what you believed when you started, you’re probably still not sure. If you do not believe in God, this probably wasn’t cynical enough. Lastly, if you take nothing from this, do me a favor: anytime you’re with friends or family and someone drinks a soda and burps, just say, “Coke works in mysterious ways.”
This essay is part of the novella “The End Is Nigh.” You can read the first installment here.
What about the Chaos Theory? It seems to me that you forget a verse in your reasoning.
Don’t get me wrong… I appreciate what you have written and find it intriguing and I don’t even begin to think that I can match wits. I ask honestly and with interest… in what you think.
I liked your story. And, this last chapter or addendum was very thought provoking. It made me think long enough to ask questions.
Thomas, I appreciate your thoughts on the series. As for Chaos Theory…well, I’m hardly qualified to talk about it. But it won’t stop me of course!
My thinking is that Chaos is just an absence of information. Given Uncertainty, it may be that we never have enough information for perfect explanantion. But it is there, we just can’t know it and therefore we can’t use it.
Its great that we can connect and talk about things like this being from different worlds and geography… Its late so I will try to get back and maybe be brave enough to express my theories. Again, My heartfelt praise for your work here.
I think Jaime is a little off-topic comparing Coke to Churches. He doesn’t suggest that Coke spends a significant portion of the Offertory on improving social conditions in the world. He doesn’t suggest that Coke, during the weekly meeting, inspires huge swaths of people to go out and do good acts. He essentially argues that the Coke - Church analogy holds because they are both corporate giants bent on global dominance. But he misses the point of Church: whereas Coke wants to be the global market share leader for it’s own gain, Churches compete to be the global market leader for their parishioners gain.
And also, it’s so popular amongst the Millenials to argue that our nation needs a healthy dose of separation of church and state. “This nation was founded by those seeking to escape religious persecution!” they trumpet. However, they miss the point: we came to America not for freedom FROM religion but for freedom OF religion.
Lastly, Jaime starts out suggesting that Belief is a antiquated, lost battle thanks to the wonders of technology and free sharing of information. This strikes me as a belief entirely shaped upon the last 8 years of religious theoconservatism that was idiotic and rampant in the Republican party. But as Sullivan suggests…61 percent of Millenials don’t claim a religion, believe in evolution, but refuse to be called atheists…
I humbly submit that Sullivan is right: a new Christianist movement is emerging, aligned with current knowledge and technology, but still holding firmly the values and beliefs that Jesus’ example teaches us.
It seems to me that Jaime is being a defeatist here: God’s methods on Earth are not obviously beneficent, therefore they must be vile and therefore he chooses to deny God.
Jaime would probably say that no one ever murders in the name of Coke!
Do we need religions for social good? No. Many other secular organizations do as much or more good without the negative consequences of religion.
Jaime doesn’t deny God, he defines God. Which all of the god-fearing fail to do.
People, like Jaime, who brashly criticize all religions in one blanket statement seem to me to be looking in from the outside, only seeing the grimy bubble on the surface, not the massive, beneficent volume underneath. They also tend to be the people that given another topic; would argue that blanket statements are never true.
I think if Jaime had gone to a good church (regularly), and had actually studied the lessons Jesus taught, and had seen how many Christian people don’t spend their days planning the genocide of the Muslim race, he might have a different view of Christianity. Or maybe if Jaime had studied the Torah, and then attended a synagogue, he might have realized that unlike the small number of Jews proposing all-out war with Palestine, a massive number of Jews are peaceful, loving people who do great work in their communities. Or maybe Jaime could have gone to Temple, and studied the Quran, and he would have realized that 15,000 Muslim extremists holed up in the mountains are the tiny, tiny exception to the peaceful rules of Islam. And Jaime clearly has no experience with Buddhism or the Dharmachakra, a peaceful religion that not only argues a soul must do good for other souls if it wishes to achieve enlightenment, but that unethical behaviors are a huge setback and disgrace (see the Five Precepts of Sila).
No, Jaime’s manifesto sounds exactly like the pining of many a 20-something in America around the turn of the century, angry at 19 al-Qaeda terrorists, jaded at the far-right Christianist movement in America, glued to their TV watching media-spun coverage of violence, violence, and more violence, and then forming the conclusion that religion is the source of all problems on the globe…wouldn’t we all be so much better without it?
The answer is no.
Alex, what do you think about Jaime’s specific arguements against God. Such as intervention, the afterlife, and usefulness, etc.?
And it may very well be that religions do good work, but how does that balance with the full spectrum of deeds?
To me, the biggest problem with Jaime’s argument on God’s use (or non-use) of intervention is that Jaime, like most people, is making two mistakes.
The first mistake is that he is “humanizing” God, in that he is painting, for himself and the readers, an image of God as some sort of puppeteer in the rafters, watching the Earth and either meddling here and there…or not. But God is not so simple as to be defined by as a Pantheon-living deity with an aged expression and an owl on Her shoulder. Most religious texts, especially Christianity, clearly state that the entire Universe is “part of God’ and that God is not some entity that exists outside of our Universe, observing it. So I think Jaime needs to broaden his idea of what God is, and what God’s intervention might actually be, given Jaime himself is part of God.
The second mistake I think Jaime is making is that he is forgetting that although he is not omniscient, God is. So when Jaime witnesses senseless acts of violence, like the attacks in New York, he doesn’t see infinitely forward and backward. Jaime killed himself long before he could see the Iranian people rebelling even as I write this…rebelling partly because the U.S. liberation of and presence in Iraq has given them the courage to stand up to their corrupt government. Now, I am not suggesting that God caused the Twin Towers to be attacked so that the Iranian people would be more courageous…that’s absurd. What I am saying is that these long-term (lifetimes-long, sometimes) causal relationships are only possible to discern from an omniscient point of view…which God has…but we don’t. And so we miss them. For example, if I hadn’t heard a girl tell me about her friend who fell off the Timberwolf rollercoaster in 1995, I wouldn’t have been at the point I was where I accepted Christ in 1998, and then I wouldn’t be here today defending religion and God against Jaime. But at the time, the death of the girl on the Timberwolf seemed stupid and senseless and I could not possibly have known that 3 years later that story would partially lead me to Christianity. But did the girl’s death have far-reaching consequences? Only God knows. Not you, not me, and not Jaime.
I don’t know if I am insane, Brian, but when I look at the whole of human history since religion was founded, I feel like there is a monstrous, massive pile of good on one side that absolutely dwarfs the small pile of evil on the other side. I don’t see a balance at all. But then again, I get my religious views from church, not from CNN. So I admit a bias.
A lot of people in a lot of places claim that their own religious books are the word of god, yet none of them through out any of it have the god’s signature. I was also wondering why this in the fiction section?
I didn’t really read much fiction here, I read opinions and facts here. seemed to me this article should have been in philosophy or perhaps culture. some what hard to explain but the anti-religion culture is on the rise.
Alex,
If God can’t be humanized, and can’t be understood, and he is actually in everything but not in a percievable way while being outside and watching things, then God may well exist, but he is useless. If he can’t be seen as different from us, then there is no reason to believe in him. It’s like the idea of Diesm. Its a big so what.