It's very simple not to believe in God and not to believe in an immortal soul. "We are nothing but matter; once we have run our biological course, once entropy catches up with us, we die, our consciousness is extinguished, there is nothing. A random meat-covered skeleton that onced lived on on a random planet in a random Universe, that just happens to exist - that is all. In keeping with our Newtonian, classical-physical worldview, one based on rational thought rather than conscious experience."
It's harder to believe in a God - a supernatural prime-mover, a Cosmic Purpose, a destination, a complete understanding - I could continue listing the attributes of God as I see them, and then have endless theological arguments with other folk who also believe in a God - but see God differently. The question of belief in an afterlife is similarly fraught - there are so many possibilities that believers can believe in, that debates about how this looks like in practice would be never ending. Literally.
So we have humanity divided into two broad groups; there are atheists who flatly deny the existence of God, and believers who feel there is a God. [I'd say that at the heart of things, agnostics who actively seek answers will sooner or later fall into one group or the other.]
My big question is - what is it that delineates the two groups? It is, after all, the deepest divide in all of philosophy.
Is it an environmental thing? Do people who grow up in either a religious society or a rational, secular society remain holding onto those views? Or does it run deeper - is it genetic? Is there some variant of some gene or other that gives an evolutionary advantage to those inclined to believe/disbelieve in the supernatural? Or is it on a higher plane altogether - is the difference indeed spiritual?
Atheists will state that those who feel the need for some metaphysical aspects in their lives are by that very fact somehow weaker for it, unable to face life without the crutch of God or some other superstition.
Believers might state that those who dismiss outright the presence of some supreme consciousness and prime mover of our Universe lack a soul, and - lacking a soul, they cannot begin perceive that which the believer holds to be intuitively true. Other believers might argue about the importance of 'salvation'. ["From what?", I'd ask.]
Whether a God exists or not can be neither proven nor disproven. Both of the following propositions - "God exists," and "God doesn't exist" - are unfalsifiable by the scientific method. I will expound further about the scientific method in tomorrow's post, but for the purpose of this one, I hold that neither of these two propositions can be taken into a lab and tested.
Splitting the "God exists" proposition further, I'd touch on the dualism/non-dualism discourse. If we assume that there is something more than mere matter, is it the soul - something entirely not of this world - but of a heavenly realm ultimately beyond the material (Descartes' position)? Or is it, as Eastern spiritual tradition posits, essentially consciousness - all part of one Universe, unknowable, evolving and ultimately unifying? If we are to somehow reconcile science and spirituality, this would be the route - based on consciousness being a fundamental property of the Cosmos, along with mass, charge and spin.
My view is that something deeper than material reality does exists; I have felt this, experienced this since early childhood; something numinous, mystical, untouchable by our human faculties. It is intuitive and deeply personal. Yes, it can have an element of wishful thinking, it can result in believers reaching out to engage with religions that are dogmatic and ultimately damaging to the psyche. But in some of us at least, it is present. Why? How? I hope to find out!
I have been careful not to get drawn into any religious dogma; my lifelong quest is for understanding God, intuiting that a God in some form does exist, on the basis of personal subjective conscious experience. Defining God, and indeed, defining the afterlife, drive my quest - and the Lenten discipline of daily contemplation and writing help clarify my beliefs with each passing year.
Lent 2022: Day 30
Let the Spirit guide you!
Lent 2021: Day 30
On being perceptive
Lent 2020: Day 30
Time - religion and metaphysics
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