After God? What’s Next?
The problem of God should not be approached as a debate, but more as a conference or conversation wherein both sides bring to the table their views and attempt to find a middle ground of truth. Is not the aim of truth to be only its’ objective self rather than one peoples’ truth over another? Religion seems an important matter to find a middle ground of truth in because it is the cause of so much violent disagreement. As many ways as there are to separate religions, there are ways to blend and unite them. Hence the need to have communication and not debate, as the insignificant differences of religions suits only a particular people, in a specific region of the world. No matter what the population or status of one religion may be, there is no one philosophy that has proved itself worthy of all humankind.
Religion may be seen in many respects as the purpose driven life or a path that humankind may follow in order to seek what is good. Purpose for Humankind, because achievement over basic survival has formed societies and civilizations, is dependent, perhaps unnecessarily, on belief in a God. We as a species are our own worst enemy in survival, with the exception of Natural forces that may threaten civilization. Since there is no recognized obstacle to our existence that unifies us in survival, people seek a higher calling in a being or an idea such as God. That we may call God a being or an idea is the cause of a further separation between not only who’s God is better, but also if there is a God at all.
In order to clarify what God is, if it exists, why it exists and if not, if it ever did or ever will, an existential neutrality must pave the way. An escape in the sense from all the dogmatic beliefs and pre-conceived notions that one brings in trying to define God. This means ignoring all historical pretexts of God, all mystical optimisms and observations, all criticisms of philosophical arguments in favor of God and all scientific groundwork that demands provable facts for existence. In abandoning these aspects we are left with only the idea of God, which leads us to the question of origin; what put us here? When we can approach this question in renewed openness, then we can build upon history, mysticism, philosophy and science in redefining the idea of God.
Of all nameable purposes this question of why we are here seems the most important in the idea of God. Can we, a civilization saturated with language, beliefs and history, return to a state of mind in which we have no expression except our own observation and reaction to natural forces? Imagine a living being on this planet with no history or language to attribute to the notion of God. There is no word, no divine inspiration or mutual acknowledgment available to you or your fellow beings, existence is just survival upon a moment-to-moment basis. Barely the recognition from which to dream up such a concept as God.
In this world and in this state, what is God and what purpose does it serve? As many religious believers will attest one can simply feel God throughout the body and earth. Without available description of what God is can this be how one would relate and experience the idea of God, omnipresent, but intangible? As humankind evolved and communication developed from cave walls and the grunted cries of animals standing upright, what did they try to accomplish in relating the idea of God? Before we can understand God as the possible creator of existence or origin of everything, we must first attempt to understand why our species needed to communicate the idea of God.
This dialogue can only begin with lots of questions. For one, many philosophers have pointed out the problem of evil and God. If everything about God is good and God is everything, then why is there evil in the world. A seemingly simple question, perhaps naÃ?¯ve in light of thinking that the problem of evil is like a moral challenge from God. So simple indeed that the profound implications of drawing any number of conclusions from this problem ruptures the very foundations of organized religion. That is where the questions begin and why so many people have begun to doubt their faith or their church, but an entirely chaotic smorgasbord of alternatives seems more daunting. As each of us seeks to be autonomous from dogma and paternalistic control, religions become a type of customized belief template. The more important concern becomes what will replace the all-powerful authority that religion has held over humankind? As Stanley Kubrick so brilliantly crystallized in the enigmatic last scene of 2001 A Space Odyssey, what’s next?
