(1)
If the universe is meaningless the only way we can face that is with quiet despair. There is no virtue involved in doing this. We either face such a universe with quiet despair, or we delude ourselves about it, or we distract ourselves in various ways.
Is there any reason for believing that life has meaning or purpose?
First of all, the words “meaning” and “purpose” used in this context tend to be fairly vague. In general usage we say that a sound has meaning, i.e. it is a word, when we consistently (however arbitrarily) associate it with something real. We associate the sound cat with a variety of four-legged animals with pointed ears and whiskers. How can life, that is the whole complex of experiences that we are undergoing, not the word “life”, be said to have meaning?
Purpose is even harder to define. A can opener is a device designed to open cans – that is its “purpose”. What is life supposed to do? Usually in these sorts of discussions one brings up the matter of the Aristotelian term “telos” or “ultimate goal” as being nearer the mark. But we certainly can think that some things have no “goal”. If a drop of rain falls onto my balcony, it’s just something that happened. The raindrop wasn’t designed, intended, or created for the purpose, of splashing onto cement. It’s simply part of a natural process, where water alternately evaporates and precipitates. On the other hand, does a salmon swimming upstream during certain seasons have a purpose? Yes, it does, its purpose is to spawn. But we know that because we have witnessed it happening again and again. We did not deduce this from watching the salmon swim upstream. Moreover, in a broader way, we might come to think that that this “purpose” is all part of an essentially “purposeless” complex of processes (as was the raindrop), that just “happen to happen”. My point here is that if we absolutely don’t know whether something has purpose or not, we cannot legitimately infer that it does. We can guess that a strange, humanmade object has a purpose, even when we don’t know what that would be, because of our experiences with other humanmade objects. But if something doesn’t “look” as if it has a purpose, we cannot assume that it does, still less guess what that might be. Does life look as if it has a purpose? From the perspective of a century and a half after Darwin – I would say, unfortunately, no.
When we talk about having a “meaningful experience”, we mean that it was a positive experience that was somehow higher, more comprehensive or integrative, than the usual sort of positive experience. In fact, when we have such an experience, we begin to feel that there is something ultimately positive to which we have gained access, however fleetingly.
We may, of course, be deluding ourselves – the “ultimately positive” may be nothing more than the release of certain pleasure-enducing chemicals into our brain tissues – but insofar as we talk about “the meaning of life”, this is what we think we are talking about: an ultimately positive state of being.
If the Ultimately Positive is real, then insofar as creatures have the power of choice, to attain it is ipso facto the final goal of their existences. (In fact, even if UP [as I will now call it] is unreal, it may still be the goal!) The issue then becomes, not what is the purpose of life, but what are the appropriate ways to fulfil it.
Reasons for believing in the reality of UP.
The very fact of having experience of it.
The “what is the least” argument –
Christian theologians invented the doctrine of “creation ex nihilo” – that is, God created the world, not out of a pre-existing substance (which would suggest that there was something other than God before the world was made), and not out of his own being (which would result in the heresy of pantheism) but out of nothing.
When people began to lose their faith in God, the lingering effect of this doctrine made them ask: Why is there something rather than nothing? “Nothingness” was seen as a possible state, out of which somehow or other “something” emerged.
In fact, it ought to have been axiomatic that, There must be something.
If that is the case, then the first question is: What is this something? Or, what is the least this something could be and still give rise to everything we know?
Well, all around us there are things that we can sense, manipulate, analyze. These things seem to be related to each other and us in complex tangles of cause and effect. We have discovered that all these things are made out of the same kind of stuff – which we call matter. In our quest for understanding matter, we have reduced it to ever smaller and simpler parts and are now on the verge of being able to describe the whole thing in terms of a handful of field equations. These, claim the natural scientists, will describe the minimal something out of which everything else has arisen.
Including consciousness? That’s almost taken for granted.
But consciousness, while it does the observing, cannot be observed from outside. I cannot infer consciousness in another creature except by analogy with myself. (I am the only consciousness I can know directly.) It would be impossible to deduce consciousness from the operations of nervous tissue for the same reason. Nervous tissue gives rise to consciousness, they say; but only because they are conscious, and they have nervous tissue in their heads.
That at least suggests that consciousness is strange, though possibly only in sense similar to the way the quantum world is strange. However, the strangeness of the quantum world became known through careful mathematical analyses of empirical observations of the behavior of subatomic particles. The strangeness of consciousness is a given.
It is at least worth proposing that the strangeness of consciousness may be due to it being, not one thing among many, but a fundamental constituent of existence. There is nothing unscientific or self-contradictory about such a proposition. I regard it as more reasonable than the alternative. (That is also makes me happier to believe it is true, is still not grounds for dismissing it.)
If consciousness is fundamental, then the very thing within me that makes me an “I” and not an “it” is the heart of existence itself, not just an incidental byproduct of evolution.
Getting back to UP: Let’s ask a similar question of UP: If UP is real, what must it be? What is the least it can be?
As it is ultimate, it must be also fundamental; as it is experiential, it must be conscious. Therefore if UP is real it is the fundamental consciousness of the universe.
A meaningful experience, then, is one where I am led away from the cyclical stimulus-and-response randomness and pointlessness that constitute my ordinary state of consciousness, towards UP, the primary state of consciousness.
UP is, of course, God; but God, in this vision of reality, appears to do nothing but Be.
I do not, as it happens, believe that God actively intervenes in personal lives or world affairs, based on how frequently and sincerely he is prayed to. Given our knowledge of what the world is like, such a concept of God rapidly becomes an absurdity. Some people give up their faith entirely; others rationalize; others blindly submit to this God. There must be an alternative.
I believe instead that the goal of prayer should be a deliberate centring of the soul on UP – the soul of the individual, the soul of the community, the soul of the world.
UP is not passive – insofar as I am aware of it, it does something within me, it energizes me. It is flowing towards me and through me. This sort of goodness in motion is precisely what love is. Now I can keep that to myself or I can attempt to share it with others. (I am sure that anyone brought up as a Christian as I was is experiencing a number of gospel sayings bubbling up at this point). This dynamic of love counters the dynamic of force – of stimulus-and-response—that prevails in the world. Nothing else does – let us not look for supernatural interventions to solve our problems.
I have given up belief in the God of power and might (understood in the most literal sense as a being who can do anything he wants), but this does not result in a lesser God. All things come from God, dwell in God, and will return to God. If God’s actions in this world were not strictly limited, we would all drown in the ocean of his love for us.
(2)
Supposing you’re in a relationship with someone you trust. Supposing this trust is fully justified. A third party puts a thought in your head that perhaps you shouldn’t trust your lover or friend, and you sadly succumb to that suspicion.
You can recognize in the above the plot of Shakespeare’s Othello, but it is also the plot of Genesis 2, if you think about it. For me, the Genesis myth isn’t about obedience vs. disobedience, but about trusting in that which you cannot see (in this case, the Lord’s true motives in forbidding Adam and Eve the fruit from the tree of knowledge).
In the past couple of centuries, philosophical materialism (buttressed by physical science) has sown the seeds of suspicion and distrust in the human relationship with ultimate reality. Ultimate reality isn’t what we’ve thought it to be, we’ve been taught. It is indifferent to us. It isn’t conscious of us or of anything at all, really, it’s just particles (or strings or fields or what have you) popping in and out of the void.
But if ultimate reality isn’t conscious, why should anything happen at all? How can anything happen if it isn’t happening to anyone?
I propose as an axiom: It is meaningless to speak of an event that does not impinge upon a conscious entity, directly or indirectly. As a corollary to this, a hypothethical first event must have directly impinged upon a conscious entity. Then one concludes that at least one conscious entity is fundamental to reality, i.e. it precedes all events, and follows all events.
It is not necessary to assume that every event must be witnessed to be real. There almost certainly is a virus somewhere in my body tearing apart the genetic contents of one of my cells. I’m not aware of it, of course, neither it nor the cell that it is destroying are aware of themselves or each other. But in a miniscule way my state of awareness is affected by what that virus is doing, or will be affected.
It is necessary to argue in this sort of abstruse fashion in order to dispel some of the atmosphere of unbelief characteristic of our age.
(3)
Here follows a perfect example of what I mean of the “cultic” approach to religion which persists to this day:
“Methodist Archbishop of Lagos, Dr. Sunday Ola Makinde, has warned Nigerians against disobedience to God and constituted authorities. To this end, the Cleric noted that the consequence of such disobedience might result to shame, death, poverty or any other disgraceful acts, detriment to the growth of the Church, People and the National.
“In a sermon recently in Lagos, at the Confirmation Service, concluding his Episcopal visitation to Talabi Coker Memorial Methodist Church in Ijesha Surulere.
“Makinde reminded the congregation of such disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, which eventually culminated to a curse on them.
“The Archbishop therefore stressed on the need to obey God's divine injunctions as well as those of constituted authorities, in order to reap God continued benevolence as well as his divine favours, connections and the turn around of their fortunes of life.
“While congratulating leaders and members of the congregation of the Church on such a very warm hospitality accorded him and his entourage during the visit, he was quick to warn the newly enrolled confirms to be vanguards for Christ and as well serve as role models for others to emulate, not only in their Church, but also, in their respective callings as well as the society at large.”
(from AllAfrica.com)
(4)
From an ontic perspective, it is legitimate to say “God is love” but it is not legitimate to say “God does not want us to eat pork”. Why? Is it just a matter of personal preference, that is, I like the idea of a God of love, but don’t like the idea of a God who imposes restrictive (and irrational - or at least unrationalized) rules on us? That happens to be the case, I will admit. But I don’t think it’s the whole story.
How do we ascertain that something is true, or is likely to be true, or that there is some reason for believing it to be true? I will not go into details here, but simply state that if I am to assert that I believe something to be true, I should be prepared to give sufficient reasons for that belief to any questioner (first and foremost myself).
“I come to believe it by an act of faith”, or “I believe it through the grace of God” are fairly obviously circular assertions when applied specifically to religious questions, and thus ought to be regarded as inadmissible. We will not be using this argument as either a last or first resort.
One of the first reasons anyone believes anything is because we were told. We are, of course, told many things that happen to be true, and some things that happen to be false.
We are told by the Bible both that God is love, and that God does not want us to eat pork. Biblical authority is either sufficient or not to support these assertions. If it only supports one and not both, we have to conclude that some parts of the Bible are more authoritative than others. And how do we know which is which? “Through the guidance of God” – again, how do you know when God is guiding you and when you are in fact listening to your own prejudices or inclinations, or are being influenced by the prejudices and inclinations of other people who have power over you? Biblical authority, then, is not sufficient to support either assertion.
Belief in the cultic God is socially imposed on individuals. Belief in the ontic God, on the other hand, is inferred from experience, in such ways as these: a) by reflecting on the basic nature of existence, recognizing that the vision of a random, meaningless universe can only lead us to despair; which justifies the quest for an alternative vision; b) through the experience of meaning, which points to something ultimately positive at the heart of existence (whether this be a delusion or not); c) by the recognition that consciousness, that which says “I am” in each of us, is not reducible to anything else; hence is fundamental, beyond the limiting factors of our normal existence, and thus also the “ultimately positive” from which the experience of meaning springs.Being “I am”, consciousness is also necessarily personal, although not in the ordinary sense we use the term.
Virtually anything might be said about the cultic God, and the ordinary worshipper must simply swallow it. It may be necessary for you to sacrifice your children to this God – it is impious to argue, just do it – or face the consequences. He rewards the good and punishes the wicked – therefore anyone who is suffering must have done something wicked to deserve it, and anyone who prospers is virtuous.
However, because the ontic God is indirectly experienced by everyone who believes in Him/Her, this serves as a measure for any assertions made about Him/Her. There are certain assertions, such as “God is love”, that pass muster in this way. One comes to see, in fact, that these are extensions of the original inference. While one can derive a rational ethic from the inference, one cannot derive highly specific commandments. One can only examine such commandments as exist and ask whether observing them would tend to bring one closer to the Ultimately Positive or not. If they do, then they may (quite metaphorically) be regarded as being His/Her words. (Frankly, however, I am wary of all such approaches to biblical law or any law, because they seem to be ways of smuggling in authoritarianism through the back door. It’s best to regard the Mosaic code as the entirely human creation of the ancient Hebrews, specifically of their priesthood, presented as being given to Moses by God simply as a way of cementing its authority.)
