Sometimes I really wish I believed in God. Or, rather, I wish I believed in an afterlife.
But I just don’t, and I can’t. I believe that human beings, the first creatures with brains sophisticated enough to contemplate their own existence, created God (and gods) in order to explain that existence. I believe that they invented the afterlife because they either couldn’t conceive of nonexistence or were too afraid to do so.
The easiest way to freak myself out is to try to imagine what would exist if there were no universe — or if there had never been a universe. What would there be instead? What foundation does our universe rest on? It makes me dizzy and scared. It’s as if our brains aren’t built to conceive of such things. It brings to mind Krona, the DC Comics character who ruptured the fabric of the universe by flouting his society’s rules against trying to discover the universe’s origins. We weren’t meant to bite into that apple.
I believed in God when I was younger — partly by default, and partly because I was afraid not to. What if I didn’t believe in God and it turned out He existed? Would I be punished? Other than these metaphysical issues, it just seemed like a Bad Thing not to believe in God. You were supposed to believe in God.
Somewhere along the line, though, I decided that I didn’t. Perhaps it was when I asked my dad about the point to life, and he responded that there wasn’t any point to life. I just know that as I grew older, and I began trying to figure out my philosophy of life, it seemed much more plausible to me that people made God up. Science seemed much more reliable. Then I read a little bit about existentialism, and it clicked with me.
So what’s my philosophy of life? We just exist. Human beings evolved, just as everything else on the planet evolved. Human beings certainly aren’t perfect:
– we have to go the bathroom at inconvenient times.
– have you ever really looked at a person walk? it’s a really inefficient way to move forward — so much wasted energy.
– our wisdom teeth and appendix are useless.
– we can’t communicate telepathically.
So evolution has a long way to go.
Everything can be explained by science. If we can’t explain it, it just means we haven’t hit upon the explanation yet. Imagine a Neanderthal trying to explain comets.
There’s no particular reason we’re here — we’re just here. Nobody’s watching us. When I die, I will die, and after that I will never, ever, ever exist again.
Someone who believes in God once told me that my view of things sounds really gloomy. Well, just because it’s gloomy doesn’t mean it’s not true. Anyway, I’m not trying to be gloomy. I’m trying to be honest.
It scares the crap out of me, though. I’d love to believe in an afterlife. In my ideal afterlife, there’s an infinitely large library containing every book ever written. There’s even a book to represent each person who’s ever lived — a biography that’s also a sort of visual blog-like device that lets you relive any moment of any person’s life through that person’s eyes. You can achieve some sort of total consciousness or state of ultimate knowledge.
I don’t know — it could be true.
It’s not that I think about the futility of life all the time, but lately I don’t have any clear goals, and I can’t see myself finding any. I’ve got a decent-though-unexciting job with great hours and excellent benefits, and I can’t see myself finding one that’s better. I’ve got a wonderful boyfriend, at least. But I’ve looked for some overriding life’s goal for years now, and every time I think I’ve found one, I turn out to be wrong. That worries me.
Perhaps if life were more fulfilling, I wouldn’t be so worried about dying. But I am. I’ve completed college and law school, I’ve come up with a million goals and decided none of them was the one, and now here I am at a semi-decent point in my life and I feel like this is as good as it gets, career-wise. From now to age 80, this is what it’s all going to be like.
But I don’t want things to be that way.
While writing the last couple of paragraphs, I’ve felt some optimism that things will get better, but I’ve realized that it will happen only if I take the necessary risks.
So there’s hope yet.
There’s always hope…
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Like you, I don’t believe in a god. And like you, I was once told that my view on life was gloomy. And, again, like you, all I am trying to be is honest. What I find really gloomy is when people place all their faith in something that they have no proof exists. To think that there is always something better after or to think that there is an after is just a big waste of time to me. Instead of waiting for the better thing to come, instead of believing that when you die is when you will reach peace, maybe as a society, we need to start thinking that this is our better place. Because it is. Because we can make it our better place. And because we have proof that it is here. Nice post, Jeff.
A hokey scenario: a bizillion years ago those first self-discerning human beings addressed questions to Sky/Sun/Mountain/&c in order to comprehend Life. And that grew into Prayer.
Some people believe we pray to address the notion of the Perfect in our mind, as all we sense in the world is imperfect in comparison. For example, we all know what a perfectly straight line is, though none of us have ever physically seen such. Somehow, and perhaps this is the mark of sentience, we know something that does not exist in this universe.
That why i (still) pray to G-d.
.rob adams
I also don’t believe. It seems bizarre to me that people are willing to invest so much time, money, and effort into followng a “religion” to gain access to an “afterlife.” If they worked toward a better life in the present it would probably be much more worthwhile.
Interesting and informative site, but I find it curious that apparently intelligent people would base their disagreement with the idea of a fundamental, universal conciousness on the rudementary defintions of god offered in watered-down, dogmatic religeous institutions whose main focus is maintianing their influence. It seems to me that if you are going to make a serious argument for atheism then one might want to at least develope more sophisticated understanding of what you are arguing against.
Thanks Rudi — I’m not sure what you mean, though. I wasn’t referring to any religious institutions (though I suppose my mentions of the afterlife and punishment for nonbelief could be said to refer to Christianity). Actually, I don’t believe in a universal consciousness, either.