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The God-Shaped Hole

Sep 2, 2013 //
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As dirty as the title sounds, the God-shaped hole is actually a fairly common philosophical concept. What it boils down to is that ever since God died, humanity as a whole is missing a certain je-ne-sais-quoi. Not even necessarily the moral compass that God typically is considered responsible for, but just the essence of having something above us, greater than us, something that is inherently right in the universe.

Even if you don’t agree that God is dead, you might be able to appreciate that God is certainly less prevalent than He used to be. The “civilized” world has all but abandoned God, by keeping it out of the majority of its establishments. Flip side are those who place their faith less-so on God, and more-so on the war for God. In every day life it seems that the intimate relationship with God has lessened from what it was even a hundred years ago. Some see this as a bad thing, others see it as a good thing. But for something like God (Higher Power, whatever) that has been around for pretty much the entirety of human existence, you’d think that having God disappear might leave something missing in our shared consciousness?

Within the last few months, I have spoken to two people (I have spoken to others as well, but they obviously weren’t memorable enough to make it into this blog post) who were in Alcoholics Anonymous, and Narcotics Anonymous. I realize that two people isn’t exactly an ideal statistical sample size, but shut up because this is hardly an academic paper. ANYwho, the person in AA is partially religious, to the extent that they believe that Christ is our saviour, but still does not adhere to traditional religious practices. The NA member is anti-religious. A burning-down-the-churches-and-laughing type of person. Not as totally polar opposite as I would like, and if anyone happens to know a super-Catholic, bible-thumping lush I’d be happy to talk to them, but we’ll have to make do with what we’ve got. But these two almost-opposite people agree on one thing: they need their Higher Power to help them with their addiction. For the semi-religious person, the Higher Power is the obvious one. The anti-religious person relies on Love as their Higher Power, and focuses on NA’s stipulation of personal interpretation to exclude themselves from the otherwise religious tenets of the NA program. Keep in mind, this isn’t a romantic love that every day humans are capable of experiencing, as “romantic love is a bunch of bullshit and shouldn’t exist.” This is a Love with sentience, that produces a form of serenity and a sense that everything will be okay. This might sound almost identical to a definition of God, but from our conversation this Love seemed like more of an inner sense rather than an outer being. It is what this person needs, and they found it.

It might be argued that this is the Anonymous program brainwashing its members into its informal religious doctrine, but at the same time, it’s hard to say what it really takes when you’ve hit rock bottom, and you feel like nothing, and maybe humans as a species really do need something greater than ourselves to pull us out of the dark. I know I certainly haven’t come anywhere close to the lows that addiction can ravage us down to, so I choose not to offer an opinion on the matter, and prefer listening to the experiences of others.

There is also a song by Regina Spektor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqG1Dh36-6s) that discusses many other examples of points in our lives where we might reach out to something greater than ourselves. No one laughs at God in a hospital, when your mother is dying in front of you and all you can possibly do is wish for her to be at peace, happy, somewhere, anywhere. No one laughs at God when the last sight you’ll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes, and you cry out, hoping for any kind of justice to be done. No one laughs at God when it’s gotten really late, and your kid’s not home from the party yet, and all you can wish for is to have something take care of your child.

None of these examples actually prove the existence of God, or even a Higher Power, but as my old buddy Voltaire used to paraphrase, if there was no God, maybe, just maybe, we would need to create Him. The need for something more creates that something more, and to deny that something more is to ignore the necessity for it.

These are all low points in personal human experience. Maybe the God-shaped hole that people allude to is really, in our collective experience as a species, a low point in our humanity, and if we hope to escape it, we’ll need something greater than ourselves to pull us out of it. Maybe we are too obsessed with the distractions of modernity that we can’t unite to actively search for this Higher Power that will save us from ourselves. I’m not saying that it is some objective Higher Power that is doing any actual saving, but the belief in that Higher Power gives us the power to do it ourselves.

I’m going to offer some counter-arguments here, because this isn’t a post meant to convince you of anything, as even I am not fully convinced one way or the other. Feel free to make up your own mind regarding the God-shaped hole.

In regards to addiction, people give up cigarettes all the time without the help of a Higher Power. Cigarettes are equally deadly, but for some reason, there is no Anonymous program to help people escape it, and yet they do. Maybe since alcohol and narcotics destroy more than just your own life, but the lives of the people around you, and even change who you are as a person, do they require something more than just cold turkey and a patch. On the other hand, maybe since there is no secular option for the recovery of alcoholics and drug abusers, we have no other options with which to compare results. It is very difficult to say what it takes to save us when we need it most, and maybe only since we collectively have always reached out for something greater, do we continue to do it today.

There is also the Nietzschean belief that there may be a God-shaped hole, sure, but maybe instead of filling it with something that doesn’t exist, we ought to fill it with ourselves and our Selves. Believe that humanity is the greatest power, and should only aspire to be greater. We as individuals are capable of incredible things, and to ascribe those incredible things onto a non-existent being is an insult to that human capability.  This isn’t to say that what I said initially is invalid, as it is the belief that is necessary to help us escape our lows. It’s just instead of the belief in a Higher Power, it should be the belief in our own power.

Or ultimately maybe it’s not so much what we believe in, so long as we believe.

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Categories Philosophy, Religion

Critique of Pure Religion

Aug 26, 2013 //
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Normally I like to direct my condemnations toward atheistic and secular modes of thinking. Not because those beliefs are wrong, but because I think there should be more critical thinking in that area outside of the typical “godless, amoral monsters” attack that is too easily repudiated. The God-Shaped Hole argument has some validity, but that’s another blog for another day.

Today I’m going to bat for the other team, and give a couple of examples of things I find wrong with religion specifically, that don’t exist outside of the religious realm.

The first issue I have with religion is the hypocrisy. This centres mostly around morality:  religion is, at its foundations, a strict guide on how to behave. However, as I illustrate in my previous blog post (https://blogforchumps.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/subjective-morality-its-all-weve-got/) we choose our own moral code, and the rules of holy scripture become less of a rigid set of ethics, and more of a timid suggestion.

This wouldn’t be as much of a problem if people admitted that they were using those rules as suggestion rather than as stone cold fact. But this is not often the case, and people will defend adamantly that they are absolutely correct in their way of thinking because their way has fancy words like “Thou” and “Shalt” in it. This is despite these people either glossing over or downright ignoring the Thous and the Shalts that contradict some of their other firmly-held beliefs.

Atrocities may be committed in the name of secularism and atheists may hold atrocious beliefs, but since they don’t have a rule book that says otherwise, it can’t be considered a hypocrisy.

The other issue that I have with religion is the notion that only things that make us miserable can be considered morally acceptable, and if it feels good then it must be wrong. This is of course an exaggeration, but it’s still true to some extent. There is the puritanism, the guilt, the asceticism, and in the extremes we have the self-flagellation, the sexual mutilation, etc. associated with religion, and because of that association, these are seen as morally proper conduct.

This stems from the belief that religion should be a restraint on the natural urges of human desire, and yes, some restraint is a good thing. But humanity seems to like taking things way, way too seriously, and because of this , this way of thinking has far surpassed reasonable levels. It has even gotten to the point where we have secular beliefs that have been created by this “misery leads to morality, and pleasure leads to sin” way of life, such as sex is bad, drugs are bad, and veganism is somehow a good thing.

I’m not advocating hedonism, but religion’s restraint on basic human urges and desires needs to be examined a little more thoroughly. WHY do we slut-shame? WHY is marijuana illegal? It wasn’t secular thinking that led to these beliefs, and yes, an argument can be made that patriarchal cultures lead to slut-shaming, but where did the belief that sex is wrong come from in the first place?

When I think about critiques of religion, and there are many, I always think of John Lennon asking us to imagine a world without religion, and I do, and I believe most of those critiques would still be around. However, I don’t know if these two issues that I have raised would be. There are obviously moral regulations that people can be hypocritical about in secular circles, but no ethical rules are as absolutist as religious ones, which makes the hypocrisy that much more apparent. And you know, maybe humanity would find a way to severely oppress our natural desires outside of religion, or maybe we would simply be content oppressing ourselves in other ways, but who knows.

Who knows?

 

Post-script: I’m not saying that religious ethical beliefs are bad. I’m saying that embracing some and renouncing others is hypocritical if you also suggest that all of those rules are good and proper. Also, vegans, I’m just teasing you. Hugs and kisses!

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Categories Religion

We’re all boned either way

Aug 2, 2013 //
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One problem people seem to have with the lack of belief in God is that it renders what we do meaningless. What purpose can our actions possibly have if they’re not part of something bigger than us? Bigger than reality? Part of a cosmic plan?

Sure there’s the whole idea that, “oooh, well it just means that what we have *now* is more important…” hedonistic approach that claims that only the present has value, (which, however valid, I will be ignoring for the purpose of this post), but I’m talking grand scheme of things, millions of years from now grand, when all traces of our actions are gone. The sun has burnt out.  Eternity.

Just work with me here, and let’s think under the concept that if there is no God, what we do is null.

Let’s give our actions some weight, then. Add God. Now we’ve got an omnipotent Judge that gets to decide what our actions are worth. Unfortunately for us, God likes to send those of us He doesn’t like down into the fiery depths of hell. It’s kind of a bummer. For those claiming that an empty universe is unjust, I’d argue that being infinitely punished for sins committed in a finite world far more unjust. Who is to say that if some horse thief from the Wild West lived a thousand more years, he might have cured all the STDs, finally allowing the world as much unprotected sex as it desired. A virtue well worth entry into heaven. But unfortunately our horse thief is mortal, and he died terribly of syphilis well before they started inventing cures for things that didn’t involve leeches. Given an eternity, who is to say what kind of people we would be? But we only have a short time, and punishing us over the course of eternity for *any*thing committed in that short amount of time is unbelievably cruel.

The other option is that everyone gets the happy ending. Everyone gets into heaven, everyone achieves nirvana, everyone gets that sweet slice of eternal bliss, no matter what. That final phrase there is what I’m driving at. The “no matter what” stipulation of a heaven entry suggests that again, what we do is meaningless. If we accept that inevitable oblivion makes what we do invalid, then we have to accept that inevitable salvation leads to the same conclusion. If the ending is always the same, no matter the path chosen, then it doesn’t matter which path we choose.

The only option I can think of where our choices have eternal weight is the concept of reincarnation without the option of nirvana. We would just be stuck in samsara (the life cycle) forever, with no hope of escape. Our actions would dictate our upcoming lives, forever and ever.  No end.

So everyone is either going to have to find some way to accept that our actions are inherently meaningless, or convert to a confused version of Buddhism.

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Categories Religion
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