“God is dead”, declared Nietzsche in 1885. What did he mean? Over the two preceding centuries, we had seen the emergence of Enlightenment and the scientific method, driven by practical men such as Newton and Leibniz, Faraday, Maxwell, Coulomb, Lavoisier. Between them, they had created the underpinnings of the technological world that by 1885 had all but replaced the superstition-based belief system of Western civilisation.
God as an explanation of everything was giving way to our understanding of chemistry, electromagnetism, gravity, steam power, calculus, the motion of celestial bodies.
Every effect had a cause, which could be reduced right down to fundamental principles. There was no longer the need for a God to explain all the phenomena that created our day-to-day reality. Everything in the Universe is matter. There is nothing but matter. Everything is physical. There is no such thing as a soul. Our precious consciousness is nothing but an epiphenomenon - an emergent property that evolved to dwell within our skulls.
But one thing troubled still mankind. God gave an answer to the most fundamental problem of them all - what happens to us after we die? The late 19th century had its own answer - and it wasn't one that most people wanted to hear. "You die - that's it. Nothing more. Your body is snuffed out. Your brain ceases to function, and because that's where thought occurs, you stop thinking and that's it really. There is no such thing as a soul!"
Whilst the rituals, the rosary beads, the incense, the litanies to all the saints could all be dropped with ease, the notion of our life being temporal and finite, bounded at both ends by birth and death, was uncomfortable. The awareness, growing ever since childhood, of our own mortality is not a merry thought.
By 1885, the old God was giving way to the new god - Reality. That which we can perceive, count, measure, hold. Physical matter. Of which everything is made.
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The old God had his flaws. For one, he was human ("So God created man in His own image" - Genesis, 1:27). He was male. How twee this seems in a Universe of 200 billion galaxies, each of a 100 billion stars, that the Supreme Being had adopted the heterogametic form of h.sapiens as a defining differentiator! And that old God was co-opted to serve the human hierarchy; religion became an arm of social control ('Behave as the Scriptures demand, and you shall be rewarded with Eternal Life').
The French revolution and the execution of King Louis XVI were turning points in religious history, as the notion of the Divine Right of rulers to rule came to an end in Europe. Superstition was replaced by reason and logic. A secular state was created, and though monarchy returned briefly to France, the old God didn't.
But which God would replace the old one?
Science, so sure of itself.
Science, which has benefited humankind greatly in areas from healthcare to IT to travel to domestic convenience and comfort.
But science is no longer as certain of everything as it once was; the more we know, the more we know we don't know. Science doesn't know how the Universe came into being, nor where it's going. Rationalists, materialists, physicalists all claim that the Universe is an accident and that you and I are random accidents on a world that just happened to be right for conscious life.
I don't believe that all humans are necessarily spiritual beings. Many are entirely content with that reality at human scale, the day-to-day reality of working, earning, spending, relaxing. No room, no time for self-reflection. Człowiek, który się nie zastanawia - 'the person who contemplates not'. People excited and motivated by prospects of luxury; people who don't experience any feelings of gratitude for being privileged with health and wealth.
For these people, the death of the old God has left a vacuum that has been filled with Reality - and Matter. The New God. Solid, attainable. And so many of us have become Materialists. "If there's no supernatural or metaphysical - then give me something that's tangible. Something I can look at and touch. Something that delights me - and makes those without envious of me."
This is all well and good, but materialism has its costs in environmental terms. Our desire to own, to possess and display objects (fine clothes, jewellry, cars, properties) to experience the world through air travel to exotic destinations, is depleting resources and leading to climate change, that if unchecked will have catastrophic consequences.
A better way is needed!
Lent 2022: day five
The Ego and Evil
Lent 2021: day five
Science, materialism and God
Lent 2020: day five
Monism and Dualism
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