Twentieth-century existentialist philosophers like Sartre and Camus argued that unless God exists, life has no objective meaning, value, or purpose. It only has subjective meaning, value, and purpose. Interestingly, neither Sartre nor Camus believed in God!
Dear Dr. Kirk.
In my opinion, the statement you mentioned in your question is applicable only for religious people, and I will explain why. Let's imagine that a guy from an island has never heard about God and any kind of religions. He is a good guy, let's say he is a doctor and he saves lifes every day and he actually likes doing it. He has lovely wife and four children and he is totally happy with his life. But he doesn't even guess about existence of God. And you know what? His life is full of meanings, objective and subjective. One can say that I tell about subjective things, but I in my turn also declare that religion is also sort of subjective thing. The difference is only in amount of people staing behind the idea of religion but the number doesn't make this idea objective. Answering your question - no, I totally do not agree.
Hello,
Life without having faith in God would be vacuous and meaningless. I think that believers enjoy better coping mechanisms so that they see the lighter side of the events and go through the days of their lives hopefully knowing the lord is looking upon them all the time.
Best regards,
R. Biria
There may be a supreme power in the name of God, may not be. But to keep most of the people normal and to keep the society intact, the trust on God among the people is very much important.
You don"t appreciate the existence of God until you find yourselves in a tight situation in which all need is GOD
Such thinking is the Outcome of Solipsist Mentalism and Existentialist betrayal of the Ontological Task of First Philosophy to arrive at Certainties,. Ignoring the Convincing Teleological Argument that the Complex order of the Universe with Universal Law and Principles and Properties, evince an Ordering Mind of God Logically necessary involved in all Creation. I am sometimes able to see the Justice that God deniers made their own lives hollow and meaningless.
Dear Dr. Kirk.
In my opinion, the statement you mentioned in your question is applicable only for religious people, and I will explain why. Let's imagine that a guy from an island has never heard about God and any kind of religions. He is a good guy, let's say he is a doctor and he saves lifes every day and he actually likes doing it. He has lovely wife and four children and he is totally happy with his life. But he doesn't even guess about existence of God. And you know what? His life is full of meanings, objective and subjective. One can say that I tell about subjective things, but I in my turn also declare that religion is also sort of subjective thing. The difference is only in amount of people staing behind the idea of religion but the number doesn't make this idea objective. Answering your question - no, I totally do not agree.
I utterly agree with the philosophy that the life without the presence of the God is useless because there is no differentiation among the works of the humans in this life in the absence of God.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Kirk,
Perhaps all will agree that life is absurd if it has no meaning for those living it. Religious faith has always attempted to answer this need of giving meaning to human life. But faith is often regarded as belief without evidence--a sort of unverified hypothesis. I think that various faiths have, historically performed this function.
It is often better for individuals if they remain as close to the religion of their up-bringing as they can manage in good conscience --moral and intellectual. People lacking value convictions are often more dangerous than people who retain moral convictions --whether based on or originating in religious faith or from something else. The existentialists seem to want to place the possibility of moral objectivity beyond human powers. That, of course, is a point of agreement with many religious faiths--according to which a "high power" is needed to escape human error. The difference is that the existentialists often held that there was no such higher power --no reality to our moral developments, struggles or disputes.
If we retain a hope of the possibility of settlement of human moral disputes (and social and political differences) by reference to the developing human condition, threats and prospects, then though I think ultimate success cannot be guaranteed or proved, this still seems a worthy kind of faith in higher powers beyond any we presently attain to.
H.G. Callaway
I totally agree with Dr. Reza and Dr. Mutasem. as Muslim I believe that Allah is there and that is what makes life meaningful.
There is NO Question in that - that
"life is ultimately absurd" irrespectively of existence or non-existence of God
I will answer from a Christian worldview. The full experience of life (evil, tragedy, learning, challenges, sickness, love, compassion, death) eventually becomes absurd for all. That is why even a good person, as the one described by Irshad, will at some point (e.g. his coming dead or one of his/her beloved) experience an emptiness that can only be filled by a God that is holy, and who has provided us with a way and truth to know Him. Indeed, not all have surrendered to the way provided by God,… and not all have been exposed to the truth of that way. Yet, all have been provided by God with conscience and freewill so that they may open to the possibility of a good and holy creator who will judge all for their acts.
Perhaps Leonid's answer is the one I can agree with most. Even though I'm not sure why "absurd" has to be involved.
It all depends how we define "God." Everyone makes up their own understanding of God, ultimately, and there's not a shred of evidence that any one definition is better than any other. (Well, let me rephrase that. Some ideas of God are downright destructive, so objectively, they should be discouraged.) Even within a single religion, different people make up different little details, in some cases extremely arbitrary, artificial, and contrived, to micromanage this "understanding" they think they have. The more detailed and specific, the more contrived these details become.
At the bottom of it all, many, maybe most people, feel that there's something beyond what we can see and experience. Some greater unifying truth. If nothing else, we could define God as "the physical laws of nature." So, our part is to preserve our species, since that imperative has been hard-coded into every single living organism that we know of.
If we do nothing more than fulfill that hardcoded imperative, life has meaning. Do what we can to help in the preservation, advancement, and flourishing of the human race. I don't think it's essential that we invent these extremely detailed notions of the nature of God, and the details of other supernatural beings (you know, Lucifer, archangels, angels, and so forth), and pretend to be responding to such overdone models of what is expected of us? Life can have plenty of meaning without such constructs. Anyone who has children should understand this intuitively!
Dear H. G. Callaway,
The point is, how it is possible to settle human moral disputes and social and political differences by developing/developed human condition? And also question is, what you mean as human condition?
This answer varies from one person to another and from religion to another. In the Muslim world, we always try to focus on what God has asked us without looking for other details that could lead to intellectual deviation
my dear Kirk
We in our Islamic world follow the divine rules sent to us by the Prophet Muhammad, that is, we have an Islamic constitution that was able to paint the way of our lives well, then this Islamic approach says that God created man and left him the freedom of choice between walking on the right path or walking On the way of the abyss
We cannot imagine a life without one God creating the whole universe
Greetings,
Yes, I agree, because if God does not exist our presence will be of no value, and our life will be meaningless, and the death will lead to a second death.
No No Prof !!!! Ask Chinese and Japanese they have the least interpretation of god !!! May be , "god" is absurd for them , they do have schools of thought in the form of societal rules and its compliance . I have lotsss of Chinese friends and we hardly dispute about god taking care of things !!!
I completely agree with Aparna Sathya Murth. I am a Japanese and don't believe in God. I think that God is the product of the religious human mind. There are many people who live without believing in God but finding objective meanings in life.
Suppose you were an early hominid and accidentally stubbed your toe on a rock. It occurs to you too use the rock to pound something, perhaps a nut or clam that you want to crack open. The encounter with the rock was accidental and the rock had no antecedent purpose, but you have put the rock to a purposeful use and thereby bestowed a purpose – your purpose – upon it. The rock is no longer a mere physical object but an object that now has significance to you or means something to you because of the purpose you have bestowed upon it.
Life is like that too – it has no antecedent purpose but only the purpose we give it through our own purposeful actions. Life has significance for, or is meaningful to, a person living it because of the purposes bestowed upon it by that person. Surely that is better than life having a purpose that has been antecedently given to it by someone else (i.e. a supernatural being).
How could the existence of God make purpose and moral value objective? If God, as portrayed in theistic religions, is a personal being — i.e. a supreme person or subject having intentions, making decisions, etc. — then his purposes and their related significance would be subjective too. As for the objectivity of moral values, I do believe moral truths are objective. However, if moral truths aren’t antecedent to and thereby independent of God’s commands, then they would have to be matters of God’s decisions, and decisions are based on preferences which are surely subjective in the relevant sense. The Euthyphro Dilemma needs to be taken seriously in this context.
If life is absurd then it is absurd tout court, whether or not God exists.
If I believe that God exists and that life is a miracle and has great meaning. But I also believe that if there is no God, still life exists and I have given a meaning to mine and that of my fellow men.
The question of representation of God is probably the first order of business in teleology and theology. We go from the simple representation that God is a supra capable man or woman, creator of all things and beings, to the more complex representation that God is the intelligence comprised within the Physical Laws of Nature, to the positivist or materialistic representation that God is unnecessary to the human mind and soul in order to achieve self-worth and for nature to be intrinsically sensible.
All of these representations assume a God who is foreign to and independent of the individual. Everything changes if we come to the understanding that God is within us, not just as a representation, but as the ethical sense alive in every human being by which he/she can distinguish the good from the bad and aspire to commit to the good. That fundamental sense of the nature of Bounty is present even in the worst criminals. The unbeatable desire that we all have to live, and to live on, is the manifestation of the force for life in every one of us, and that is the root of all human representations of the Good. This unrelenting push for Life is what comes to materialize in human conscience as the conscience of the Good. Indeed it is the sprout of God in every man and every woman.
In that sense, God is totalitarian, impersonal, but also the highest form of expression of Intelligence and Teleology. Not as an entity external to the individual, but as the fire that burns within. It is interesting that the Tradition of the Archangels in all faiths teaches God as the impersonal force within, spread in All, and that God transcends individuation, individualisms and individuals.
This also means that every time that you’ve seen the face of a living soul, you’ve seen God!
If there is no god, who has created the Universe? Who has created you so carefully? If it is automatically, then why not a man doesn't come automatically from the soil or elsewhere? I think this is type of question and answer are not considered as intellectuals or scientific, rather to inspire the atheist . Being a Muslim this type of question utterance is a great sin!!! Definitely there is God and H is the Supper Power and He Sent Messengers to the world man to be on the right tract!!
The problem that we have in religion cross planet is that priests of all epochs have projected God as an image of individual self, contrary to the teachings of all the sacred texts, including Quoran. If you make God a human person at the image of self, then you have to attribute to God culture and psychology (personal psychology). Then God for me is MY vision of God, and my God is going to be better than YOUR God. And my God is a God that must prevail coming from an incarnation or reflection of my own Ego, instincts and desires, of which I remain unaware. The notion of "sin" is a consequence of the psychology that we have attributed to God.
If you consider that God is Grace, Mercy, all Bounty and Benevolence, then there cannot be sin in God or to God. Individual sin can only be a condition on a path to Higher Fulfillment and therefore there cannot be intransigence and final call of destruction or murder due to sin. That is the measure of Grace for sin. If we stop thinking of God as something external to oneself, but think of self as a part of God or the experience of God, and that the very essence of self, the biological force in us that keeps us alive as individuals (beyond the notion of soul) is the very expression of God and an experience of God, then you have started understanding your Quoran. Because the Prophet did not see a God or a person God from whom the revelations were handed down to him. Yet, the impersonal Voice was unrelentingly talking to him…
It is possible that a human person having achieved a Higher state of Grace and Benevolence would have to be perceived by us in behavior and faculties as an unspeakable Wonder. Man of this era has never seen one, however the sacred texts have given us testimonies of the existence of these beings as integrants of the Order of Archangels. It is from them, by reading Scripture between the lines, that we ultimately have to learn Divine Transcendence, or simply the Nature of God.
The answer will depend on one's belief.
For theist, how can life be there, put aside being absurdity, without the Source (God) of life?
For atheist, who rejects God's existence, absurdity or goodness of life come as a result of nature and human actions.
Like Sartre and Camus, though non-believer of God as you have introduced, to all human beings setting God aside brings futility and absurdity of life.
As long as you appreciate and value your life, as long as you desire to live and live on, then it matters a single bit whether you believe in God or not. Because life in you, you have not given yourself. You are an individual experience of Life, Life has fashioned you thru phylogenesis and ontogenesis. This Life Force is God. It is only because this Life Force does not permeate in common individual consciousness that we have discussions and arguments about the existence of God or not.
Once you come to a clear understanding of the indefectible instinctual impulse for Life, which is at the root of our individual existences, as a reflection of God, then there is no more theism or a-theism. This is the ultimate consequence of Sartre’s existentialism. Because things do not exist because they exist, and that’s all there is to it. There is a fundamental movement that embroils all things in existence. It is totalitarian expansion. That expansion is an expression of the Life Force, and it is the vector that gives us the most profound sense of righteousness, ethics, Bounty, Benevolence as much as sense of what is Good. I am sure all will agree that the worth of a man is not in how much material wealth he has amassed for his Ego, but how much Life he/she has spread around himself/herself thru empathy and assisting and caring for others. Indeed it starts with procreation. And that is why the Tradition handed down to Man from the Most High is fundamentally based on Patriarchy.
Yet, no man or woman has pro-created another thru individual ingenuity, self-intelligence or own intuitive knowledge. Every individual life is a timeless achievement of Life or the Life Force. So I believe that we need to re-contextualize our representation and understanding of God. All of us, scientists, atheists and believers. Otherwise we are all going to succumb to intolerance, egocentrism and destructive warfare, no matter how devout to any religion or the religion of atheism that we think we are.
Life may or may not be absurd and God may or may not exist but unless one is a strong theist, the question itself is absurd and illogical.
The people that believe that the meaning of life depends on the existence of God are "strong theists." It is possible to believe in God and not believe that this automatically confers meaning, justice, goodness, beauty, purpose or any other quality on human life. For example, Benedict Spinoza - in spite of the misreadings of his work - was not an atheist. He did not assert that God does not exist but questioned whether a providential deity (God) can be believed, that is a God who provides and protects humanity. Among contemporary philosophers, Richard Kearney wrote a book called, "The God Who May Exist." In this view, which is open-minded, God or a god or gods may exist but nothing follows necessarily from such a belief. For example, one could believe that God a god may exist but it is not all powerful, all knowing or all good. We could call such a position weak theism. Rabbi Harold Kushner takes this position in part in his book, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." His answer to the problem of evil in the world is that maybe God is not all-powerful. The Rabbi is clearly a theist, believing in a God and even in a providential God who wishes us well, but who is not necessarily all-powerful. This is a refreshing idea that shows us the way out of such unproductive beliefs and the false questions that follow.
Now, let's look at the other side of the coin. If God or a god or gods do(es) not exist does that make human life absurd? No, the statement itself is absurd except perhaps to strong theists. It is absurd and contentious to claim that the only basis for a meaningful, purpose-driven life is to to have a non-human entity confer meaning on our lives. Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus and the rest of the existential were still in the thrall of the divine when they argued for absurdity in the absence of the divine. It was like a drunk person waking up the morning after and saying, I'll never drink again. Since I am not a drunk, I don't need to renounce alcohol.
In my reading, especially in the case of Sartre, the existentialists made such bold assertions for two reasons. First, because they were transgressive at the time. Sartre was nothing if not a perpetually transgressive child, breaking the rules. This is very clear in the best and most honest piece of writing of his entire life: "Les Mots" (The Words), his autobiography which only discusses his life to the age of ten! Second, especially the French existentialists were living through the double whammy of: (1) the eclipse of French power and their hegemony in the world, living through the end of their harsh and unrepentant colonialism in Africa and elsewhere, and (2) their humiliation by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Instead of facing these realities, they resorted to nihilism and declared life absurd. Sartre's life, I agree, was absurd. I have more sympathy for Camus who was betrayed and harshly treated by Sartre. Maybe life was absurd for Paris intellectuals, but it wasn't absurd in Rome, London, Prague, Warsaw, or even Berlin where people focused on rebuilding their cities and their lives.
This question is an example of what Ludwig Wittgenstein and his followers dismissed as a "pseudo problem." The question itself is false and has no meaningful answer. (But taking it apart to understand is useful, which is why I am taking the time to answer it.)
As for myself, as a philosopher, I hold by the radical contingency of life, which means that much of life is a series of unrelated and unintended accidents. The belief that such accidents or occurrences are intended, determined, or chosen by God or any other entity is a supernatural superstition that is outside our understanding of the natural world. This does not make life absurd for me. It is precisely our own choices after the fact, after an accident, occurrence or event that change us that make life meaningful. Something may occur in my life but unless I acknowledge it, name it, and remain faithful to it as an event that changes things for me, it is just something that happened, not a true event and a meaningful fact of my life.
Vincenzo Di Nicola
Psychiatrist & philosopher
University of Montreal &
The George Washington University
Dear Kirk,
Objectivity is a result of empiricism in that it is a product of observation, which makes it something we can all agree on by experience.
Subjectivity is a result of personal psychology and produces views that we are doomed to disagree on because it is a result of individuals’ particular window on the world.
In science, by norm we give primacy to Objectivity and disfavor Subjectivity. Yet, many “empirical” observations in science turn out to be wrong and become later invalidated by better science. Example: the astrophysical observation of a “static universe” in vogue in cosmological physics for quite a while (pre-Hubble). Whereas some scientists with unusual insights about a problem, decried by peers in their time, are able to properly seize own intuition and produce innovative views that later become the problem solvers. Example: the statistical physics of Ludwig Boltzmann.
So we should be cautious about scientists’ views regarding the value of objectiveness and subjectiveness, let alone philosophers'. And, in my view, existentialism is an incomplete philosophy because, it has not ascertained to best satisfaction the relationship between God, Universe and Man. What it is saying is that the universe has no meaning in itself, it only has meaning because meaning is a product of mankind collective psychology which infuses purpose to matter thru the visualization of an intelligent God.
You can revert that entire perspective thru the other perspective that I have contended here regarding the nature of God, and the relationship of God with Man and Universe. Let me say that I discuss these issues in greater detail in my latest paper on Theory of Knowledge.
Article A Unique Cognitive Theory of Universal Knowledge Based on Ma...
Cheers.
From a physical science perspective, the world is too overwhelmingly structured, for anyone, scientist or layman, to justifiably believe that its unrelenting activity represents a series of "unintended accidents". When we incessantly discover the awesomeness of its structures in the deepest molecular realms that shape the living, we can say as much for life or human life. These structures and this activity are deeply intelligent and purposeful. Let’s just say, without going too far back, that is why molecular biologists are in awe with what they saw in genomic activity and have been able to replicate with CRISPR.
I will go even further and say that not because we are still officially unable to decipher in psychology and philosophy the cartography of a human life, are we in good right to declare that it has no structure or cyclic course. I contend that if the physics of matter is governed by Laws, and that the Physical Laws are based on Fundamental Symmetries (in the mathematical-physics sense of the notion), there is no place in the entire scale of the Universal Arena, from microcosm, to macromolecular realms to the cosmic scale, for attribution of randomness to any event or structure, whether living or inert.
Lastly, one ought to understand the word MEANING or purpose as COURSE. And that human intelligence is only part or a fraction of Higher Intelligence in Nature. We only live to discover day after day how broadly encompassing Nature’s Intelligence is, far superior to mankind’s. The problem that we have is a problem of representation. The problem of understanding the nature of God is the same as the problem of the pervasive Cartesian vision of Nature by which Man’s destiny is to dominate Nature. MEANING or PURPOSE is the result of COURSE. There is only one direction for the LIFE FORCE, which makes it a FORCE FOR LIFE. To me, this expansive and pervasive and unstoppable Force is the best representation that we can have of God. The univocal direction of that Force as manifest within us is what gives us as living entities a CODE of ETHICS, a path for ELEVATION and EVOLUTION as much as EXISTENTIAL TELEOLOGY.
Cordially.
Dear Kirk,
That after war French wave of philosopher Sartre and Camus called their materialistic and depressive viewpoint on life : ‘’existentialism’’. I think that it rather fitted well the depressive mood of that time and place. We have to remember that Sarte was still believing into the promesses of Stalinism and Maoism at a time where it was obvious for any observers that these utopia had turned into dystopia.. Their philosophically sense was as accute as as their political judgement! In sort, I don’t have much sympathy for such philosophical nonsense. Why should a religious person, i.e. a person having an experience of a religious life pay attention to someone who say that it priotize living experience and talk about the religious experience he never had.. The only experience Sarte could testify is the experience of a materialistic secular person he was. The absurd he was talking about, is the absurdity of such a life.. Yes life can be absurd but not necessarily so.. It is a choice. If a person choose to see life as absurd, that person should be kind enough not to depress other and at least insist that it is their kind of life that is so depressing and not necessarily all form of life.
Actually all the religons of the world are proning a primacy of experience over intellectual understanding.. They are all existentialist in the best sense of the world.. Of course there are always dogmatic religious leaders everywhere who advocate primacy to obedience and not experience… Many philosophers advocate a primacy of experience which is a primacy of human imagination , the creating, the concreteness of life over the primacy of obedience to our intellect or the one of other.. . The transition of life to the cultural type of life of humanity was, is and remain a constant struggle to be true to life.. This is the price of the freedom of that sort of life. A higher form of life that can loose its very source, who can destroy even the very basis of its creation. Human societies have fought that battle , each in its own way to remain true to life and civilisations have rise and declined as it is drastically doing right now. We are a political animal, and our fight for life will remain a political and a religious one. The first realiisation of our type of life is that we will certainly die and our struggle has been to overcome this. Embracing life for humans demand a kind of heroism because all conspire to tell the person it is impossible.
I utterly agree with the philosophy that the life without the presence of the God is useless because there is no differentiation among the works of the humans in this life in the absence of God.Belief is a great blessing to acquire happiness. He who believes is happier than who does not believe. A guilty mind is always suspicious who always suffers from tension. Thus outcome of disbelief is tension that paves the way to be restless. As per Marxian philosophy religion is opium. A theist achieves happiness through that addiction of opium since time immemorial.
Perhaps this exchange of views could be more fruitful, if we tried to critique Camus and Sartre’s ideas on their own merits, and not from the social context that surrounded them. Every ideology is influenced by social context and the times in which they came to light. While the report of social context influence may be appropriate in a historical anthology, it may not be that much when it comes to pounding the very ideas themselves.
I think it is important in a conversation about God for one to first, if not define, but make clear what is the representation that one holds of God. Before we can exchange views about whether or not life makes sense without God, it is very much fitting to discuss what God is like for each of us. Not in attributes but in existential representation (ontology).
The second point to clarify is whether or not the question refers to human life or the living in general. This is not a trivial argument, because the universe with the other elements that make up the biosphere will continue to exist, should a cataclysmic event of some kind occur that wipes out the human race. So therefore, will the world make sense, or continue to be intrinsically purposeful, without mankind and the towering God mankind had visualized all along (or for some invented)?
And the third part of the question seems to be, does it matter or not if anyone who does not believe in God make an assumption about the influence of God in the world to the positive? Should they be taken seriously, is any contention to the positive coming from them in that regard to be taken for absurd?
For me, God is not a Man, or a Woman. For me, God is every man and every woman, ALL of us together. For me, God lives in us. God for me is almighty not because s/he is confined in One, but because s/he is spread in All, and beyond.
Is a criminal a part of God, say you? How could that ever be? Higher wisdom reveals that death is an essential component of Life. As scholars, we must ultimately consider that our bodies would not remain alive and vibrant if the continual process of cell auto-destruction known in biology as apoptosis was not there to orchestrate death to the army of cells that have become unnecessary and compromising every minute of life. King Solomon’s higher wisdom teaches us in Ecclesiastes 3:
“There is a time for everything, a time for birth and a time for death… a time to kill and a time to heal… a time to destroy and a time to build… a time for tears and a time for bliss….”
God is not afraid of evil and suffering no more than s/he is afraid of the experience of death. Because in the Charter of God, evil and suffering and death are only a means to Transcendence. That is why God has instituted the High Tradition of Sainthood based on Martyrdom. In the Christian Tradition, God has not died to rescue us from our sins and evils, as priests have it, but to put before our eyes, I believe, the exemplary experience of vanquishing death and evil thru yield and above all, I further believe, to show us that is the fundamental reason and meaning of our lives (of suffering) under the sun.
Who is God for you? Representationally. Do you care to share?
First the God of the Bible change a lot throughout the scripture. And Jesus's message is unique and , Ahura Mazda has also a message of its own. What is important it is not really what God, Allah or Ahura Mazda is, it is their message. The scripture is not an invitation to speculate about God, it says at many places, we can't, but an invitation to listen.
But that being said, I will speculate anyway. First the deities are means throw which nations keeps together and express their collective consciousness and pass it from one generation to the next.
God is the creator. It would better to say that God is the creating at the core of all that exist , at the core of me and you, at the core of all. Although God is at the core of me, it is the creating and life in me, I am made free to either make the world better or worst. The former require sacrifice , to give one's life for the greater life, while the later don't and it is trying to save one's life at the expense of other and it is why sin is always attractive and following God always difficult.
Whatever the name we call whether it is the god or otherwise of the same in the form of nature , which is an Omni potent . With our birth we have to come know regarding our existence for which our entire arrival on this earth is due to our mother & to us she is everything for us .
It is only after arrival we have come to know regarding our caste,creed,& religion ,& where we speak to religion generally the name of god automatically comes in to picture . Our creator has offer us a mind & brain in our silent zone where we contemplated , our mind speaks for inner urge & divinity within us helping us to move towards the life passage of our life . It we have think in the existence of god for which sometime back i have expressed my views in my publication under the name'' Existence of God '' for which i submit herewith for your perusal .
This is my personal opinion
The way that everyone we represent God is indeed a very personal and intimate experience. Because for many it is the place we go when we need to brace ourselves in the most difficult moments and circumstances. You will hear the a-theists call for Goodness (My Goodness! – For Goodness sake!) in those moments because Goodness is their God, perhaps unknowingly so.
Nevertheless, the mutual sharing of our representation of God or Goodness, can be one of the most powerful means for the meeting of cultures, which can ultimately lead us to universal peace. If you are a white man, God is probably for you a white man. If you are a white woman, God is probably for you a white man as well, by education. If you are a person of dark color, God is most probably for you a white man as well, due to transculturation on account of colonization. To a person of dark color who has overcome transculturation, God will probably be a black man. African animists even hold that God is both a He and a She at the same time. If you are an Asian person, what would be God’s race or appearance for you? Would God be of Asian appearance? Would God be instead of dark appearance, akin to the Buddha?
It is natural that everyone of us thinks that God is of one’s own race. If you are an a-theist you probably believe that your race is the owner of Goodness. But then, is it not an unsustainable reductionism to reduce the person God to be at your own image? How can we deny someone of a different ethnicity faculty and right to “naturally” represent God as a higher person of his kindred? Can the single person God be of all races at the same time? No, is my firm answer. At that point we can play foul and turn God into an abstraction, an ethereous entity somewhere in an unphysical place, or a principle of some kind, so that we can still live with that self-centric representation of God. It is only with the recognition that the OTHER God or the OTHER’s God, physical and racial as we all represent Him or Her, is God too, that we have come around full circle and with all honesty. At that moment you will have seen Greatness and Goodness in someone OTHER, and you will have probably met his or her Humanity for the first time thru the God in him or her. Because a personal and physical God cannot be ONE, but ALL of us at the same time, in all good reason.
It takes an open mind like this, or for us to open our minds like this, to understand the vastness of God. The name I put on this is Higher Consciousness. The secret of universal peace. If we can have patient, rational and acrimonious conversations about God we can all come to a place of deep mutual understanding and tolerance, beyond our differences and maintaining our differences.
Cheers.
It's a good question. In an educated forum like ResearchGate, you see many questions related to religion and the God. The sad thing is, in almost all these discussions, people tend to say - my God is true God, My religion is superior, and put other religions and God at an inferior category. I have even seen cat and mouse discussions over here at ResearchGate!
With regards to the question as to, 'do you agree that if God does not exist, life is ultimately absurd?' I am pretty sure many people would think - if it was my God, yes, life will be absurd; if that was your God, he doesn't even exist.
Even we don't have an agreement that all Gods (belongs to all religions) are equal (even if one were to believe so!). Dose this question really make any sense this perspective or a convincing answer to such an intricate question would actually change the mind of few. Nothing gonna happen! Our ego will kick in, we can tease apart few, that's the end of it. We will move on! At the end of the day, that's what will happen!
Science grows, because people 'ask questions', and keep asking, 'why?.' As a true scientist, that's what we normally do! On one occasion, someone answered in a similar scenario, 'faith substitute knowledge'. That was the highly upvoted answer.
Trust me, when people say God, they don't really mean your God or my God - It is their 'ultimate' and 'superior' God!
Now, tell me, which God that we are talking about here? How many of you really mean when you say God, you mean God of every other religion?
@Pandi-Perumal
Thank you for your very candid and valuable input for this discussion. What you are doing is inviting those who have been instructed by religious education that their God is the only God to consider the ominous level of self-centrism there is to this conception of God. I have to say that the priests have historically done a very good job at that, we are where we are in deep-seated cultural antagonism today very much thanks to them.
That is why the faithful ought to take the scriptures in their own hands nowadays to remove from them the hatred and self-centrism, otherwise called orthodoxy, under which God had been buried. And the best way to that avenue is in attempting a rational, patient, meticulous and all respectful conversation about God. God, well understood, is an opportunity for us to understand each other and to discover each other’s humanity. If there is a group of people who can fruitfully attempt that undertaking, delicate though it might be, it is the educated.
It is only up to us to let our egocentrist gods lead us to mutual destruction or let the Goodness in everyone of us, aka God, positively transform us into agents of Life.
The Cathedral - The Mosque – The Synagogue - The Buddhist Temple – The African Ife. Is any of these places God’s preferred abode? If so, why?
Per original Kirk's question: We exist, we live in preferred places; if God exists, then...
Should you prefer for God to only inhabit heaven, then what is the relationship of the Temple (or your Temple) with Heaven?
Dear Joseph,
Even bar owners know that the decor is important for this partucular human activity so religious activities are promoted by certain decor, architecture and arts and not by other.
Dear Louis,
I know that you tend to have secular views. So from a secular viewpoint, these places are strictly human cultural monuments of gathering.
But in all scriptures, these places are tantamount to Holy of Holies, and are regarded as such by the faithful. There are many of the faithful here, and it would be interesting to have their reaction too... they should feel free and in good comfort to share...
Dear Joseph,
My views are not secular views although I am a strange christian. I agree with you and my answer was more a defense of such places of worship.
Dear Louis,
Clarification well taken.
My attempt here is to show that being keenly rational about God can deepen our faiths in an unexpected way, while strengthening our mutual ties as human beings. All too frequently, the egocentric world that we have collectively built takes us apart in so many different ways, contrary to God’s purpose as revealed by the tremendous amount of diversity that we see in Nature.
No, I very strongly disagree. At a base level - we do not have broad proof of the existence of a God, it require faith. We do not even have core agreement on what god is; are "Gods" allowed? Mother Earth? Gaia?
Second, Absurdity is a subjective interpretation as are concepts of God. My understanding of Sartre and Camus are as philosophers who had found a kind of of modern mental "paradox" such that if you believe "God is dead", you reveal an assumption that at one time "God is alive"; making you look like a fool. Just because they felt ennui' or nihilistic thoughts after rejcting proof of God does not mean that the "absurdity of humanity" flips on whether God exists or not. I don't agree with their "philosophies", nor for example, Descartes' mind-body dualism (because he was wrong on many "factual" issues). But as PHILOSOPHERS, they have given us much to ponder. Descartes' is required reading in the history and philosophy of psychology, consciousness and neuroscience, but he is not the final word..
Sorry folks, but "Faith" statements, or beliefs you hold despite lack of evidence don't help advance a psychological science. The more I think about this question - and even it's wording and the answers here, the more feel I am being trolled. Yes, Philosophy is the Godmother of Psychology, but this is not a question for Psychology not psychologists to address.
Dear Xeno,
It would be interesting to know what your own definition of God is. The fact that you are a skeptic as claimed does not save you from the standard of a definition, or at least a representation, because to apply the attribute of non-existent to something, you must still define what that thing is. Otherwise the argument would amount to the assertion that nothing is nothing, which would be meaningless in this context.
Second, since you claim a scientific ground to your skepticism, it would be interesting as well to state from which science, and which tenets in that particular science, you are advancing your criticism. Fundamental physics? Neuroscience? Psychology? …
Third, what is your standard of proof? Do you think that you can and need to advance a proof of your own consciousness to others? If not, why not? Please do not confuse with behavior.
Cordially.
Dear Joseph,
You made an interesting point. A believer of whatever statement has to provide evidences. A dis-believe of a statement has to provide evidences. Nobody should have a free ride.
I have a question for you. I do not believe in miracles, in resurection of Jesus, in the historicity of most of what is in the bible. But I do believe in the immanence of God in me and all that exist ; I do not believe in any surpernatural but I do not limit the natural to what we know or could be known in principle; I believe in the worthiness of a lot of biblical moral teaching (not all though) and into Jesus's message on how we should live. And from my youth to now, I have try my best to live as a christian and I consider myself a christian. But am I one according to you?
You do seems to be cherry picking your way to a belief in what suits you Louis; I doubt if Jesus set up a religious 'supermarket'.
Dear Tony,
Jesus cherry pick his way into Judaism. He would not mind that I do the same.
That's something that you just made up about Jesus; what evidence is there?
He was to all accounts in the Gospels a good and practicing Jew.
You on the other hand just pick willy nilly, a bit of this a bit of that.
BTW I don't believe in miracles either just in the enormous power of Christ who apparently has a control over science as we understand it. We aren't omnipotent especially in regards our knowledge of science.
Dear Louis
I'm a Johnny-come-lately to this discussion and maybe I'm a bit hard on you. I think God would be gentle with you as He has been in the past with us all; He wants us (me) NOT to be judgmental (lest we be judged ourselves).
I do make the point though that 'miracles' were the 'lingua Franca' of the days when Jesus was on Earth (the first time); at this stage in time it seems to be science is the 'lingua Franca' of our times. God seems to go to lengths to talk to us in a way we will understand including a vernacular.
To answer the question asked by this thread I think that without God life is definitely pointless, vacuous, and living in ignorance, not blissful ignorance, but a life filled with tedium and final remorse, a yearning for something better of which we are unaware. Believers might still be ignorant of the details of the better world beyond, but we are aware of providence that plays a role in our lives on Earth.
I am soon unfollowing and cutting out of this Q&A - this forum does not have the threading required for advanced side conversations. Dare I say this discussion itself is absurd in part for the point I made initially - there is no shared definition of "God", to get linguistic, maybe the best meta-definition is "good", so yes, I believe in DOING GOOD -- if you don't you are are not on my good side nor "God's side" should IT exist, subjective "absurdity" aside. Most religions force "God" into a gender - I fully reject that. It is absurd to think and believe "God" is gendered. Is my life "absurd" for NOT believing in god? or is my life absurd IF there IS NO GOD? these are two incredibly different questions -- and I say "NO" to both. Why is this a Question on RG.net with theses tagged topics? Finally, why did I take the bait?
Dear Louis and Tony,
I find your exchange quite interesting. To the question asked to me by Louis, I must say that it would be quite presumptuous on my part to put a qualification on you as a Christian, given that I am not even a deacon of the Church. I think that if everyone of us would have to meet the burden of being fully compliant to canon to qualify as a Christian, none of us would be one, not even the best Pope. As to myself, I confess that it is very difficult to fully comply to even one of them, for instance the principle of Yield, which is a prime element of the original Christian doctrine. Not for lack of trying.
Also, Tony, I think that what Louis is trying to say is that Christ has chosen the impersonation of a Jew to make the divine manifest, while there are clearly other options in ethnicity that were of choice. Again if we do not resolve the question of thinking of God as an individual or a singlet instead of a vast multiplet, we are going to be left with these thorny arguments. In canon, Jesus is God made Man. I might add God made Man to the Jews. If you are going to communicate with someone, your best approach is to speak his language and assimilate his culture. I believe that God lives in us and accordingly becomes manifest to us thru the elements that define us biologically and culturally. God did not pick and choose. God is manifest thru all and every culture of mankind and epitomizes his essence thru a supreme incarnation of Self in every human culture. How I know is because the core message is the same in all religious doctrines. The Christian principle of Yield (show the other cheek) is the same as the principle of Martyrdom in Islam, the word Islam itself meaning Yield. I could go on and on with the other religions.
You can see why this perception also makes the question of one God or many gods a moot argument.
Interesting conversation, so let’s keep talking…
Joseph
I see the question of 'impersonation' as perhaps similar to my comments about 'language'. God had decided to intervene in history and it fell to the Israelites that Jesus was born a Jew of the Virgin Mary. So Christ was born to the Jewish couple, Mary and Joseph via the Immaculate Conception. I note that Muslims as well as Christians have a belief in the Holy Family. Yes this is 'impersonation' in a sense but it is hardly cherry-picking
Your comments are interesting in regard 'Yield'. " I could go on and on with the other religions." I'd be very interested in more comment please.
My reply about one God or many is that to me every religion sees God from a slightly different perspective. So, to me, we (different believers) each see the one God in different ways. This 'self-image' of God is partially cultural or partly 'epigenetic', or 'nurtured' if you like, as opposed to the innate image of God (we are made in God's Image) which is 'above' or more fundamental than this cultural aspect of religion, whether Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, etc (you mention the Self).
I think of the 'intuition' within a person. Where science is a formal process of learning it tries to put this 'innate' knowledge in a language that can be spoken by all believers, including atheists (believers in No God). So we can all speak this common language; the 'lingua franca' of our time.
Dear Tony,
Why is Christianity different than Judaism? Some difference of opinion on how the tradition should continue. Why is there different versions of Christianity? Different opinions on how it is best to continue the tradition? Why do I cherry pick? Because I have my own opinion on how it is best for me to continue the tradition.
The miraculous stuff in the Bible and the gospel was the 101 way to convince children and illetarate that Jesus was special and his message from God. A common religious marketing technique of that era.. I do not need the miracles to be convinced of the Jesus’s message.. I was impressed by it when I still believe in Santa.. Pass that age, I would have needed to pull my brain out of my skull in order to believe this and so I prefered to classify the miracle stuff into the santa stuff. But I did not throw the baby with the bath water. I do not tell children Santa is not real nor I bother other Christians that miracle are … but I thought that I could have an adult conversion here on this thread and truly express what I believe. Notice that the miraculous stuff is very different from one religious context to the next. Virgin mary appearances seem to be limited to catholic land, and each culture has miracle fitting that culture. So the miracle stuff is not so miraculous after all. Note that I am not a positivist or scientistic scientism. We do not need to invent miraculous stuff, the world we live in is like a miracle which we almost understand nothing of. We do not need to add false miracle to the true miracle of Nature.
Dear Joseph,
I do not think a boy could have survive the neiborhood of my childhood with the principle of Yield. Different people have different religiosity and each religiosity. As you said they are a lot of similarities but there are differences as well. The set of human traditions are like set of leaves of a tree which has a single trunc. It took 500 million years of biological evolution to get to this trunc and about a few hundred thousand years to culturally diverge from the trunc. This show that there is not much differences among the leaves compare to what unite us: the human imagination. God is Life. And so the life in me, a life that took 4 billion year of evolution on this planet to be created, speak to us thrown what we are as long as we open ourself to what we are call for. I take very seriously the biblical saying that we have been created at the image of God. This is the key transition from the primate to the human imagination, the very special type of imagination we are. Much before the modern idea about how humans biologically evolved from primate, Poco della Mirandola in his manifestor ‘The Oration on the Dignity of Man'' defined the peculiarity of humans of not having a fixed nature like all other animals, but to have a plastic nature and from there the opportunity to become closer to God than angels but also the possibility for us to become lower and farther from God than the lowest animals. This is the blessing and curse of humanity, this choice and the amazing difficulty to stay true to LIFE and not loose our way.
Tony & Louis,
I like the analogy with “lingua franca”. The view that I am trying to express here is de facto that lingua franca about God that we all speak. According to that view, there is no a-theist. An a-theist is someone who simply has not (yet) recognized that God is inside of him, impersonated in the Goodness of his heart, or that God is what and who animates his very conscience, and the Goodness that he/she experiences as a person in consciousness. So it is because God expresses himself or herself in Goodness. That is what is otherwise known as the Beatitudes in religious canon.
This form of simultaneous spread of God in All became evident at Pentecost when the Apostles started speaking in tongue altogether, in fact a prophetic language by my reckoning.
By remaining isolated in self, one can always take the position that they do not believe in miracles. In fact, the Church is not asking anyone to believe in miracles, as I view it. What the Church today is asking of anyone is to come see one, to buy a plane ticket to Paris, Rue du Bac, go see i.e. the bodies of Sainte Louise de Merrimac or Sainte Catherine Labouré, deceased for now 2 centuries and yet with their bodies inexplicably intact. That is why they have curated and kept that Chapel free open to all. Should one insist in approaching the question in terms of whether or not one believes in miracles, one is then playing foul!
But if your statement is to mean that you do not believe in mysteries, I am totally with you, because the mysteries only exist for the duration of ignorance in the fundamental metrics that belie the universe in its multitude of nth-D strata or n-space stratification. Not a simple puzzle to decipher!
Happy holidays!
Well, the idea of god and worship are external (I am sure ) ...
To internalize requires you to know the definitions properly and definitively !!!
Aparna,
Can you kindly share your definitions for the conversation?
Thank you.
Will try Prof !!! by conversation we mean "God's existence"
by "internalize " I mean the balance of ones power , too much anything is taking far away from reality/mundane that which keeps us going .
I don't agree with the thesis showed in explenation of this question. I don't think that God's existance is necessary condition to explain and to understand the reality and phenomenons occuring in the world, and first of all to be a good human being.
Religion is for me only a social phenomenon and it is probably important in history of some countries and for development of different cultures. But religion isn't a tool to explain anything from scientific viewpoint.
Aparna,
Allow me to say that I do not pretend to teach God to anyone, I am not a priest or a theologian. My motivation is to uncover a rational perspective to understand God that will keep us together thru our cultural differences instead of pulling us apart as usual thru hatred, ostracism and ultimately mutual destruction.
My point is that we have to keep away God as an invisible abstraction, and cater to a Real God personified in the Goodness in us, every single one of us, whether believers or a-theists. This God is our Life Force. So the face of every one of us is the face of God. When we come to this realization, we will be more accepting of each other, more tolerant to each other, and hopefully we will come as well to an understanding of the meaning and purpose of our differences.
At the personal psychology level, if I think of God as another Man out there, invisible and powerful though he might be, it will be my personal God, my own God, the one who talks to me, and prefers me, the one who shelters me and preserves me from evil coming from others. This God will have the attributes that I egocentrically set for Him. But if I think that God is the Goodness in every Man, that my relationship with God is the relationship that I maintain with all my other fellow Humans, that it is the individual Life Force in them that creates the collective Stream by which we achieve Society and Culture which both sustain and feed my own life, then I assure you it will be the beginning of the end to evil in the World.
Our common egocentric view of God leaves us with a tremendous deficit in visualizing how much our individual lives are based on TRUST of each other. The home where you are right now, you trust that its builders built it so that you can be secure inside of it, you did not and could not verify every single structural component of it for such trust. You trust that the entire teams of fellow humans who collaborated to built your car, did not built it with flaws that will cause it to explode on you. You trust that pumps at the gas stations have been calibrated to give you the exact amount that the pricing is calling for, you don’t know who the calibrators were. You trust that the road and bridge built by others for your ride will not plummet under you. The most fundamental currency of our lives is TRUST, and it is ultimately trust in the Goodness of every other one of us. When you do your work with love and instinctively put the best of you in it, you do so for others. The Goodness in us is the foundation of our Lives, because if it was the evil nothing would stand. The Life Force-God flows thru everyone of us toward every other. Unquestionably.
It is time for us to finally come that realization. The ultimate purpose of every religion is to instill in us that higher form of consciousness. So I believe.
@ Grzegorz K. Jakubiak
I think that your answer probably speaks for every other scientist out there. I will briefly debunk it in order to drive my point home.
You write: I don't agree with the thesis showed in explenation of this question. I don't think that God's existance is necessary condition to explain and to understand the reality and phenomenons occuring in the world, and first of all to be a good human being.
What you assume is what priests have taught the faithful throughout all time, but not what is essential in religious doctrine. For Christians, one of the cardinal principles is: Do not do onto others what you would not like them to do onto you. Only treat others as you would treat yourself. This means that you cannot define the Good or what is good from self. You cannot define how to be a good human being in and of yourself. You can only define Good in relation to others. What is good for you is only what will be good for others as well. What is not good for you is not good for others either. So the State of Goodness is a collective ontological state that transcends the self. It is not an Abstraction and it is Totalitarian. It is the Spread of the Life Force that subsumes Mankind and beyond, and she only knows of unrelenting flow. God is God-in-All or All Encompassing: The Almighty. That is the best and most faithful representation of God that emanates from Scripture.
This universal doctrine is above Science, because science is only about how we become aware of the world beyond us. The best scientists will acknowledge that there are two ways to acquire knowledge of the world: empiricism and intuition. In my view, it is a moot argument which is better, because which is most suitable for you depends on your level of consciousness.
At the moment, let try to better understand God by rationally casting God in a more physical way in accordance with Scripture.
I believe that life is created by one creator (God), so life without God will not exist. Even though life still is absurd.
Dear Joseph,
One of the weakness of scientific modeling method that exists since Newton stems from the separation of dynamic (differential equations) from initial conditions. This basic modeling methodology applied to the whole Universe necessarily fails because it necessarily needs an origin where a dynamic and initial conditions can't be explain by the very nature of the method. Because nothing comes from nothing, the Universe defines as ALL THAT EXIST cannot by its very definition have began. But the last few hundred years of scientific research .in biology, geology, physics, astromy, etc have shown that the Universe is an evolution and so any specific entity that exist in the Universe did not exist at some point in the past, it has evolved from something before it. So if we go back in the past , there is only two aspects to the Universe that had to be always there otherwise the evolution could not have happen: the creating and a principle of stabilisation of the create. The core of the reality is thus ALIVE, and the Universe is an organism.
Dear Louis,
When you write: “Because nothing comes from nothing, the Universe defined as ALL THAT EXIST cannot by its very definition have begun.” You’ve put it very well once again. The problem that both the faithful and scientists we have in our representations of Nature is that we do not understand the nature and activity of the void, and we live by the mirage of time. The Big Bang story line in cosmology and fundamental physics is indeed as problematic as the notion or belief by the faithful that God is a singularity that created the Universe. The faithful do not ever wonder where did God go after He created the Universe, or for that matter about His musings before the puff, nor do theorists ever consider that the initial conditions pre-Big Bang would have to be integral part of the evolution of the Universe, and thus the Big Bang cannot qualify as the beginning of the Universe (and that a set beginning is an elusive concept and an impossible).
These forms of thoughts are monolithic forms of mentation, which look for point-like beginning along a timeline when prospecting Nature, while an understanding of the dynamic Universe and God Almighty requires a totalitarian form of mentation. According to such thinking God is boundless as much as the Universe is edgeless, and God Almighty is or must be a God-Universe. The concept of eternal or timelessness in cosmogony cannot work together with that of creation in good reason.
To react to the second part of your comment, Evolution in the Universe does not exist along a timeline, which is a human invention that fundamental physics, and by extension the life sciences rooted on it, have not yet been able to overcome. Evolution occurs not in time (which does not exist) but in space, or thru internal activity of the vacuum, within its internal order of symmetries, which are many. These concepts I have extensively developed in my books and other writings.
In general, the common faithful is not quite ready to rationalize God in that manner. And I remain very respectful of their way of experiencing their faith because God is always a treasured personal experience. I still believe though that stretching our minds to those heights can make for a better communal experience in Culture and promote peace between Cultures.
Dear Joseph,
I agree that the mathematical and physical concept of time is a pure human invention like all of physcis by the way. Alhough time is human concept and invention, an invention that has been extremly fruitfull in many ways, and which is not one invention but a whole series of geometrical inventions, it is hiding the higher reality of change. Change is not a human invention and nor is cyclical changes which are everywhere in Nature and which have allowed the to reduce a part of changes to the changeless through the variable t. This is the most important idea of Galeleo and Descartes, the invention of analytical geometry, the invention of space time, a base onto which Newton and Leibniz have built mechanics and onto which the whole modern natural sciences have been built. But this has hidden the irreductible change of creation. A success always cast a shadow and the invention of time has casted a big shawdow and create a monster: the world as a big machine myth, a total evacuation of life , of creation from the world, a big life sucking vacuum conceptual machine. We are not stranger to the type of myth and thoughts we entertain. If you imagine being a machine, the very thought influence you in a way that actually drive life out of you and making you act as such machine. Killing or obscuring life at the conceptual level is actually preparing and contributing to its total actual destruction. We are a being of fictions and the fiction we create soon become reality. And what Hollywood produce is quite scary. It is not a coincidence that the modern science developed at the same time as a process of gradual secularisation of the West and now of the whole world. The two phenomena are intimatly linked in the internal dynamic of the human imagination which strike a balance between two side: a egocentric lifeless controling side which is the one used to rationalized and the social living empathic side which is creating, which is loving. As Pascal recognized it, there is an angel in all of us and there is a monster killer sociopath. We are in equilibrium and the slope is very slippery towards the sociopathic rationalistic side. The cultivation of our creative and empathic side is essential while we cultivate our rationalistic side because left to itself the later create a monster. The whole societal gospel of Greed that began with modernity is cultivating at war with our truly religious empathic side.
Dear Louis,
You write: >>As Pascal recognized it, there is an angel in all of us and there is a monster killer sociopath.
That I perfectly understand. However my thesis is that even when we behave as a killer sociopath we preserve a fundamental sense of Ethics that tells us that our actions are unbecoming and malevolent. This sense of Ethics comes from the better Angel in us and never departs from consciousness. It is conscience or the sprout of God in us. It is clear that our life experience is about a set of material constraints that we have been assigned in duty to handle and the ultimate arbiter is the Angel in us that steers us thru that life experience and provides the necessary guidance to us thru intuition. The end result in terms of maturity acquired by the spirit at the end is truly what matters.
That is why King Solomon’s wisdom expressed in Ecclesiastes teaches that: “Everything under the sun is vanity!” Or the Buddhist / Lamaist wisdom teaches that “Life down here is an Illusion.”
My take.
Dear All,
Here is : Truthdig debate between Sam Harris and Chris Hedges,
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/religion-politics-and-the-end-of-the-world/
At 22:50 Chris Hedges gave his notion of God which I agree with:
‘’ God is the name of our belief that life has meaning. One that transcends the world’s chaos, randomness and cruelty. To me to argue that God exists or does not exist is futile. The question is not if God exists. The question is either we concern ourself with or remain totally indifferent to the utter sanctity and ultimate transcendence of human existence. God is that mysterioius force and you can give it many names as many religions do which work upon us and throw us to seek and achieve truth, beauty and goodness. And God is perhaps best understood as our ultimate concern , that in which we should place our highest hopes, confidence and thurst. …
God is inescapable, it is the life force that sustain, transform and define all existence.’’
The debate is interesting although it is painfull to listen to the illetrate views of Sam Harris on religion but Chis Hedges views are interesting.
The reason I am pointing out this definition is that it is perfectly framed as an answer to the current question:
Do you agree that if God does not exist, life is ultimately absurd?
Here God is defined as the LIFE , the living hope that life has meaning,purpose, beauty, goodness and beauty.
Louis - I like your answer perhaps the best - but my guess is that most here won't accept that "god is simply a meaning system" - in this case, the question becomes, "without a system of meaning, is life ultimately meaningless?" We have many systems of meaning, that was my point I guess - do they have to also be "real" to prevent absurdity? Why does the original question focus on God as the arbitor of absurdity? What if your career was based on a theory later proven to incorrect? What is you were the one to find the evidence challenging the very theory? does that render your life absurd?
Absurd is the “existence” – any type. Absurd is the birth and then the death. If, we exist and then disappear, the “existence” is not certain, it is partial, limited, it is not a real “existence”. It is an appearance.
Like the butterflies, we come and move. How we know that God exists if we do not know that we really exist or we exist partially? We hope and in this process of hope and transition between birth and death the human creates, thinks, hopes, smiles and during this process communicates with the eternal and infinity, God and Hope. He created the demigods, heroes being born with divine qualities. They are called demi-gods or in modern term semi-gods, because one of their parents were a god or a goddess. However, mortal heroes were no less respected than semi-gods. Therefore, philosophically human can reach God and can communicate and exchange with the eternal and the infinity. Hope is endless for human creativity.
I would like the readers to pay attention to what Nasadiya Sukta talks about it.
The Rig Veda (in Sanskrit) is the collection of hymns from around 1500 to 800 BCE. Rig Veda 10:129 is in a famous hymn of the tenth mandala. It is known as the Nasadiya Sukta, "Not the Non-existence", and is often given the English title "Creation" because of the subject that deals with it. Nasadiya Sukta is provocative and probe into the paradox of origin. The translation is given below.
The non-existent did not exist, nor did the existent exist at that time.
There existed neither the midspace nor the heaven beyond.
What stirred? From where and in whose protection?
Did water exist, a deep depth?
Death did not exist nor deathlessness then.
There existed no sign of night nor of day.
That one breathed without wind through its inherent force.
There existed nothing else beyond that.
Darkness existed, hidden by darkness, in the beginning.
All this was a signless ocean.
When the thing coming into being was concealed by
emptiness, then was the one born by the power of heat.
Then, in the beginning, from thought there developed desire,
which existed as the primal semen.
Searching in their hearts through inspired thinking,
poets found the connection of the existent in the non-existent.
Their cord was stretched across.
Did something exist below it? Did something exist above?
There were placers of semen and there were powers.
There was inherent force below, offering above.
Who really knows? Who shall here proclaim it?—
from where was it born, from where this creation?
The gods are on this side of the creation of this world.
So then, who does know from where it came to be?
This creation—from where it came to
be, if it was produced or if not—
he who is the overseer of this world in the highest heaven,
he surely knows. Or if he does not know…?
I thought the Nasadiya Sukta was a brilliant masterpiece. It discusses thing in an eloquent and logical manner - both the puzzles and paradoxes, which laid a foundation that resulted in the philosophical, scientific, and an intellectual inquiry that followed.
Please pay close attention the last line (highlighted here!). What would you make out of this sentence? How would you interpret this? It talks about the Creator as well as His Creation. Does it talk about his capabilities?
The ancient Hindus have pondered, puzzled, and must have debated and argued on the same question thousands' of years ago. Surely the very nature of questioning by the Ancient Hindus most likely reveals that they might have looked back into back into the history, the similar way that we did. What we are looking here, is an unsolved question over the past thousands of year. What have we clarified since then?
Now, let's come back to the question, "Do you agree that if God does not exist, life is ultimately absurd?". "He who is the overseer of this world in the highest heaven, he surely knows. Or if he does not know…?"
As scientists, we must question everything! That's what a true scientist must do - no matter what his/her religious denomination is! Apparently, that's what the Ancient Hindus seem to have done even in the antiquity!
Dear Seithikurippu
My understanding (which is just a hypotehsis) is that the words of Genesis 1 (below) may have been the result of a 'congress', a meeting of minds, sometime in prehistory, a bit like you are talking about Seithikurippu.
I personally being a scientist who believes in the theory of evolution (with differences to the early form given by Charles Darwin) see that Genesis 1:1-31 is compatible with my version of evolution. So I accept what you say about science and sacred texts.
Some of your text Seithikurippu reminds me of the first verses of the Bible's Genesis.
I'm sure there are differences but there undoubtedly similarities too:
"
1 In the beginning, when God created the universe,[a] 2 the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God[b] was moving over the water. 3 Then God commanded, “Let there be light”—and light appeared. 4 God was pleased with what he saw. Then he separated the light from the darkness, 5 and he named the light “Day” and the darkness “Night.” Evening passed and morning came—that was the first day.
6-7 Then God commanded, “Let there be a dome to divide the water and to keep it in two separate places”—and it was done. So God made a dome, and it separated the water under it from the water above it.8 He named the dome “Sky.” Evening passed and morning came—that was the second day.
9 Then God commanded, “Let the water below the sky come together in one place, so that the land will appear”—and it was done. 10 He named the land “Earth,” and the water which had come together he named “Sea.” And God was pleased with what he saw. 11 Then he commanded, “Let the earth produce all kinds of plants, those that bear grain and those that bear fruit”—and it was done. 12 So the earth produced all kinds of plants, and God was pleased with what he saw. 13 Evening passed and morning came—that was the third day.
14 Then God commanded, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate day from night and to show the time when days, years, and religious festivals[c] begin; 15 they will shine in the sky to give light to the earth”—and it was done. 16 So God made the two larger lights, the sun to rule over the day and the moon to rule over the night; he also made the stars. 17 He placed the lights in the sky to shine on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God was pleased with what he saw. 19 Evening passed and morning came—that was the fourth day.
20 Then God commanded, “Let the water be filled with many kinds of living beings, and let the air be filled with birds.” 21 So God created the great sea monsters, all kinds of creatures that live in the water, and all kinds of birds. And God was pleased with what he saw. 22 He blessed them all and told the creatures that live in the water to reproduce and to fill the sea, and he told the birds to increase in number. 23 Evening passed and morning came—that was the fifth day.
24 Then God commanded, “Let the earth produce all kinds of animal life: domestic and wild, large and small”—and it was done. 25 So God made them all, and he was pleased with what he saw.
26 Then God said, “And now we will make human beings; they will be like us and resemble us. They will have power over the fish, the birds, and all animals, domestic and wild,[d] large and small.” 27 So God created human beings, making them to be like himself. He created them male and female, 28 blessed them, and said, “Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control. I am putting you in charge of the fish, the birds, and all the wild animals. 29 I have provided all kinds of grain and all kinds of fruit for you to eat; 30 but for all the wild animals and for all the birds I have provided grass and leafy plants for food”—and it was done. 31 God looked at everything he had made, and he was very pleased. Evening passed and morning came—that was the sixth day."
(Good News Translation (GNT))
Dear Tony, thank you for your comments. Yes, I am aware of what Bible says about the genesis. In fact, it is almost universal, everyone of any denomination knows about the genesis of Bible. However, it is unfortunate many Hindu's might not know about Nasadiya Sukta, let alone people of other religions. That was one of the reasons why I highlighted this issue here.
First, it has been argued based on archaeological and scriptural dating, all Abrahamic faiths came after Hinduism. Secondly, similarities in various scriptures account for the adoption of various religious practices among the religions. Although it is a controversial topic, one cannot deny the facts. It will be out of topic to discuss those issues here. Hinduism is rooted in Santana Dharma (way of life) whose age is unknown.
Dear Seithikurippu
Would you have any references to this universality you speak of. I'm aware there are several, maybe many versions of the creation (and evolution) like Genesis 1:1-31 but I have not yet read any good references, maybe you have some?
I do notice that some creation 'myths' have the concept of chaos and randomness such as modern evolution as espoused by many atheists. My understanding is that this is more related to human ignorance rather than the scientific truth of the matter. We humans are evolving our scientific understanding which is getting closer to the scientific 'truth'
So (atheistic) evolution as we currently understand it is not complete nor correct. It is an ignorant partial 'truth'.
(*attached)
Figure 2.3 Hypothetical scientific description of reality as a function of time across the centuries (representative units). Ignorance is the gap between limit and asymptote at any point of time. Scientific evolution is a measure of ignorance as a function of time.
See also Article Self-Field Theory: Cosmological and biological evolution may be linked
Dear Xeno,
Nowhere I refer to a system of meaning.
''Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao’ ''
No,
GOD is a concept for the generator , operator and Destroyer. Life depends on belief system . so if someone belief in god then life may be absurd for him/her . But if someone belief on himself/herself then it does not matter.
@Seithikurippu R. Pandi-Perumal
Dear Seithikurippu,
Thank you for this beautiful and insightful excerpt. I always enjoy reading Ancient Hindu wisdom.
Also I thank Louis for reporting the piece from Chris Hedges, which exposes the same position that I have been advocating in relation to a representation of God. A meeting of minds.
Fair to say that all ideas about God come from the particular forms of thoughts thru which we prospect the nature of God. There are 3 modal representations that are at work in our cogitations:
1.- God does not exist but only a conscience by which we naturally tend to do Good (we don’t need to believe in God to be a Good person). This is the minimalist or monolithic form of thought which grants God the most minute existence there can be in the form of a punctual individual conscience.
2.- God at the image of Self as a stylized and highly able being endowed with the power to Create the world that is conceivable to us. This form of thought is slightly more open than the previous, since it gives God existence beyond the strictly individual and proper ontology in Nature. This representation is the one cultivated by the priesthood in most religions.
3.- God Transcendence, which is an asymptotically open form of thought in granting God broad-encompassing attributions in terms of the vital force that subsumes and animates both the living and matter, a sort of boundless cosmogonic being. This form of representation is present in all scriptures but not promoted by the priesthood in general for many reasons, not the least of which is that they don’t understand it.
(More on forms of thoughts in this paper: Article Mathematical Foundation of Human Cognitive Categories of Aim...
)The last is indeed an all-time paradigm, evidenced in the excerpt cited by Pandi: “Searching in their hearts through inspired thinking, poets found the connection of the existent in the non-existent”. Equivalent to the Zen thinking which enigmatically asks the question ”What is the sound of a single hand applauding”. This paradigm is based on the formulation of a representation of the void, which is interestingly the same paradigmatic problem confronted by modern physics when it comes to a representation of the vacuum. Interestingly, famed physicists Stephen Hawking has said that in his view physicists can explain God better than priests ever will! Can he?
Vivek it''s not clear who you are referring to. to me or to others; I'm assuming below it's me and you are saying man creates GOD in the human brain.
No, we may be 'made in the Image of God' but we're not that good, we are more intelligent than the primates but we are still 'creatures'. A lot of what we think is not correct. Gd however is omnipotent and can 'raise from the dead' for instance.
''What do the poets ‘say’?
They say that everything is everywhere at once.
They say that all nature is alive.
They say that all creation is dialectic, separating heaven and hell.
They say that the material world neither is nor isn’t, but disappears.
They say the created world neither is nor isn’t but appears.
They say the containing form of real experience is myth.
They say that time and space are disappearing categories.
They say that men are Man, as gods are God.''
(Notebook 18, par. 12)Northrop Frye
Dear Louis,
Please do not confuse mundane poetry, which may be very artful and even of philosophical inspiration, with contemplative verse of the religious order which results from Elevation of the spirit. You may not have read (or read enough) the Book of Songs, or or i.e. the verses from Prophet Amos, which I find to be among the most beautiful verses ever written in all literature.
I am not familiar with Northrop Frye, but some of the things that you object to as a matter of evidence can be argued quite rationally to the contrary. You write:
They say that everything is everywhere at once. They say that all nature is alive.
If you consider, from a quantum physics perspective that everything in existence possesses a vacuum component, and that the vacuum is boundless at all scales, then yes, “everything is everywhere at once.”
Further I read in the Book of Proverbs: There are 3 things that I consider to be beyond my comprehension: The trace left by the eagle in the skies, the trace left by the slinking snake on the rock and the trace left by the boat in the midst of the ocean… An equivalent to the contemplative metaphysics so central to Hinduism in its many different colors.
If you consider, in all openness of minds, that God is the Force that animates the entire Universe, and that there is an ontological component of inert matter to all living entities (everything below the histological structures down to the atoms and particles that make up our living bodies are inert matter), then you will understand that you can never separate inert matter from living matter, that what makes one differ from the other is a question of behavior, that the boundaries between the living and the inanimate are not known, and that a well thought out inclusive ontology must seize all beings in their Unity. That is what incontestably legitimizes Animists views about God and Nature, which by the way are integral part of Hinduism and Lamaism, not just African animism. Now you may disagree from a Cartesian point of view, but it is only because Cartesian forms of thoughts have no visibility whatsoever at those heights.
That all said, like you I firmly disagree with this:
They say the created world neither is nor isn’t but appears.
They say the containing form of real experience is myth.
My take.
Dear Joseph,
Northrop Frye is not naïve about the relation of poetry and religious prophet. Frye was both religious and one of the best literary critic of the 20th century. He taught Bible course for most of his life and he is the first authority on a modern prophetic poet: Blake. You kow there is an age old debate between philosophers and poets. Most philosophers opposes poets. Not all. Plato opposed them. Aristotle did not. He recognized that that poetry is about an higher truth accessible to the imagination but not the imagination in the rational mode. In modern time, Vico is the first to recognized this. Positivism or scientism is the summum of fall into the opposition between the rational and the poetic.
‘’ everything below the histological structures down to the atoms and particles that make up our living bodies are inert matter’’
I disagree. Yes it is the way that physics conceive the matter given that physic is only about the inert conceptually expressible but it is only because we can’t interview electron yet. If it is God, LIFE that has and is creating the Universe than EVERYTHING is alive. There is no in between. Either all Alive or all dead. Whatever is only understood scientifically is by definition as if it is dead. But is it dead? I don’t think so.
Dear Louis,
I may have misunderstood your reaction in your last post citing Northrop Frye.
We are definitely on the same page in the belief that everything is ALIVE. If God understood as the Almighty is that pan-universal Source that subsumes everything in existence, then everything must be ALIVE , the difference between one existent and another to be viewed as forms of Life. It is when our spirits achieve a solid connection with this Foundational Beatitude that the Sacred transpires, which we call the Prophetic. Note that despite all the knowledge accumulated to date in our science, in particular the life sciences, it has yet to achieve a well-rounded definitive physical definition of life. There are many reasons to this inability, but one question for a strictly Cartesian mind (a.k.a strictly scientific secular minds) to ponder about is how does life arise from a macromolecule. It is a good question for the Faithful as well, in particular the educated among them.
Dear Joseph,
Giving a definition of LIFE, INTELLIGENCE, CREATION, CONSCIOIUSNESS is utterly impossible because it would denied what it is trying to define. Whatever can be defined is utterly dead. So it is not surprising these defies any definition. Only machines can be defined anything else can't. And so science is restricted to the machine-like, to what can within a certain approximation be described as machine-like. Biology which is the science studying life never could have defined life. Psychology which is the science studying the psyche, consciousness, Mind, never could defined what it is. Nor physics defined any of the assumed entities it is dealing with. All these topics are created by the human mind, within our form of life and inspired by our form of life but we cannot define ourself but this is not a limitation for being ourself. All the empathic side of ourself , the side dealing with what is alive, animate does not need such definition since it work through the insight provide by our inherent capacity to be all form of life which are intrinsic to our form of life. This is what to be human, to have this form of imagination, one that is decoupled, not limited to the here and now, one that work within itself, create within itself new form of experience that it can share with each other. We are here throw our narrative creating common experience, and create it throw the resonance of our nervous system, in a form of ''living together'', thinking together. Although science is empirical, all the insight come from our type of life form which has access to the whole realm of life directly throw our consciousness. I realize this gradually throwout my life and more clearly during the middle years of my Ph.D. in vision when I decided to stop to be blind and to use only my rational imagination but to start using my vision to tell me about my vision. It happened while looking at trees and it is like the trees told me about themself. This is 20 years ago.
Regards
Louis,
You might not believe it, but I largely agree with you! You have said in your own words that it requires Transcendental language to formulate the dynamics of life in the most faithful manner. Because Life is fundamentally about seminal motion, it cannot be intimately apprehended thru the static language of constraints and boundaries centered on definitions, which is the vehicle par excellence of scientific knowledge and the rational method.
However, there does exist a formulation of Transcendental language. This language appears not only as vehicle of communication but as a vehicle of transformations or phenomenology as well. And at the heart of it is Symmetry and the many different orders of symmetry. If you can listen with a fine ear to the Mystics of the Church when they are in the state of exaltation or the Prophets of all faiths, you will understand that this language is Prophetic language. When Moses asked God for his name (Genesis) so he can be specific with the people of Israel about who invested him, God told him something to the effect of “I have No Name and NoName is my Name if you must use one” or to the Pharaoh “I will be whoever I will be” (Exodus). If you make a connection between Symmetry, Harmonics and Resonance, as understood in physics, you will understand how powerful the Verb or the Prophetic Verb can be. I could largely extend on this to uncover the elements of the Transcendental Verb as it appears in other faiths, but I will keep it short.
This discussion is very interesting, but - I believe - requires some precision as to the examples of positions.
The argument that "unless God exists, life has no objective meaning, value, or purpose" was developed separately and on different, metaphysical grounds by Camus and Sartre. Camus rather claimed, that the person has desire for an objective meaning, which could be rationally comprehended, and experiences lack of such state. God is then perceived, in early Camus, as a metaphysical consolation, used in order to avoid pure confrontation with the reality. This, however does not mean that life has no objective meaning, but rather, that such meaning is unknown to the individual. There are difficulties, among scholars, to agree whether this meaning is only unknown or completely unknowable. As for Sartre, in Being and Nothigness he develops his thought from very strong, ontological considerations, in which God's existence must be rejected, and deemed impossible. His argument is not, that this makes life meaningless - he finds meaning in such situation completely dependent from individual's action as to make it meaningful. As Sartre put it: ""Either man is free and does not derive his meaning from God, or he is dependent on God and not free." This meaning is certainly not objective in both cases (of Sartre and Camus), but both claim that meaning exists. Camus claims, that revolt against absurd condition makes my life meaningful and in the process transcends individuality "I rebel therefore we are". Sartre in his later philosophical considerations also considers the intersubjective sphere in which individual freedoms construct their meaning without resort to God.
As to the way Camus and Sartre treated God, Camus said once, that he does not believe in God, but he is not an atheist. Such statement makes his relation to God and religion more complex than that of Sartre, who at least in Being and Nothingness, rejected the idea of God on philosophical grounds.
Additionally, the two philosophers had a different idea of initial experience of loss of meaning. For Camus, the absurd was both a notion and a feeling, and its effect was the conviction, that the meaning we desire is not to be found/discovered in our experience of the world around us. This makes at least the agent looking for meaning not really thinking of himself as contingent. Sartre, in his early writings, considered contingency to be universal, and the agent, who throws himself into projects may be seen as one avoiding his own contingency. In 1945 Sartre said that absurd is “the universal contingency of being which is, but which is not the basis of its being; the absurd is the given, the unjustifiable, primordial quality of existence”.
Joseph and others -
These non-threaded settings are next to impossible to follow. Respectfully, my definition of "God" is not especially important as I am no expert. Even theologians & philosophers debate the definition of "God" - and religious followers as well. THEY seem to say "God" possesses two main qualities: God is omnipotent, and all knowing. In Western Christianity, we also hear things like "God is good, God is great. God provides." If FAITH in God and worship brings meaning to your life, then you have meaning in your life. If in reality, there is no God, then your life would still have meaning. Meaning comes form many sources, not only religious teachings. Native Americans belief system did not have this classic concept of a "God" and I have found deep meaning and gained understanding from their few written works.
However, I do have a loose working definition of "God", and that is "God is good" literally. There is no god - there is only the choice of doing good rather than bad. You are free to believe there is a God, and if it helps you do "good" then I am glad you have faith; but if you kill or turn a blind eye based on faith, you already lost - your life is absurd if you kill or even just slander in the name of "good". By my definition, this question makes even less sense - we know there is good and bad, and in many cases we are faced with making the "right" or "good" choice. That gives life meaning whether you think there is a god or not, and wether there actually is a god or not. I have to say, all these strong unexamined statements of faith are not inspiring.
Regards, Xeno
Life is absurd whether God exists or not, but it is even more so if God does exist for the evidence indicates that despite his alleged omnipotence, omniscience etc. the universe manifests many design flaws. Woody Allen is correct:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4415-if-it-turns-out-that-there-is-a-god-the-worst
Some of the design flaws are made light of in this hilarious video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_G9awnDCmg
http://news.gallup.com/poll/108625/more-religious-countries-lower-suicide-rates.aspx
Gallup Polls from 2005 and 2006 show that countries that are more religious tend to have lower suicide rates.
When you look at the survey of the 67 country, belief in God is central for a large percentage of the religioius people in that gallup study.
This result tend to support that religiosity, and thus the belief in God in most cases then to make believers less suicidal than non-beleivers. This provides some objective evidences that atheistic life tends to be less meaningfull or less worth living.
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