Bubble of a Believer

Human preoccupation with the idea of God has survived in hearts and minds of countless zillions from times immemorial. It owes its existence in human consciousness to a sense of wonderment with nature, fear of unknown, awe with birth of a child and, as destiny has it, pain and suffering that human beings endure in the course of life. When pain, suffering and injustice that pervades human experience become tough to explain and hard to endure; at that transcendental moment, awareness of frailty and transience takes refuge in dimly lit illusion that generations from antiquity have been calling, God.

Psychological dilemma of God’s existence or non-existence aside, atheistic view is lack of ‘theism’ (a-theism). It is not necessary for atheism to provide proof for absence or lack of existence of God. Existence of God is for theism to prove. Cleverly, however, responsibility to disprove God is mostly shifted to atheism that claims nothing.

Religious scholars delve deep into philosophy to create premises whereby one may come to recognize God. In our age of science, arguments on sole premise of logic without supporting scientific data do not hold much water anymore. Nonetheless, such arguments continue to float around. Among various arguments for existence of God religious philosophers frequently use three arguments. They are called ontological argument, design and purpose argument and moral argument.

Ontological argument is based on intuition. God exists since I can conceive it as all-perfect, omnipotent and omnipresent. Argument such as feeling of God’s presence is hardly any different from other personal experiences, religious or otherwise. Who can challenge ecstasy of listening to Mozart? I am not sure if there is any answer to feeling-good argument that survives inside the cocoon of personal experience.

Purpose in the design of Earth and universe is an old argument. This argument was succinctly forwarded by theologian William Paley. With some variation, design and purpose argument continues to abound in creationist circles even now. Creationists tell us that there has to be a design because astronomers are able to predict timing of solar and lunar eclipses. They are also able to chart out orbits of heavenly bodies. Admittedly, it is possible to time all of those celestial events but does it mean design? Even if it means design there is hardly any significant mundane or divine purpose that can be lavished upon an eclipse or the orbit of a heavenly body.

In fact, it is very easy to compute eclipses and orbits of celestial bodies. However, if somebody is bent upon calling solar and lunar orbits as prefect design then the religious genius would have to explain why elliptical orbit of our glorious planet is more perfect than, shall we say, if it were a circle.

On a different note, consider grass that a deer to graze on and flowers full of sap for honey bees to suck from and so forth. Let’s look at these occurrences through prism of design and purpose. What divine purpose was in the death of lovely little Bambi when a tiger who was lurking behind the same grass tore her jugular vein apart and who would explain the fate of first worm that was picked on by an early bird? Is it beauty of purpose to see majestic dinosaurs go extinct and rest comfortably in museums but petty mosquitoes keep on buzzing around spreading malaria?

Let’s hope philosophers who argue existence of God on cosmological ground have something tangible to say. Cosmological argument takes the form of “causality and contingency argument”.

Theists speak of a super-being that created physical world. They argue, since everything is created by something, he who created everything is God. On the other hand, those who argue existence of God on the basis of creation of universe are, somehow, silent about destruction of stars goes on all the time. Maybe, the story of destruction remains untold because we are fortunate for not knowing our cosmic cousins who perish with dying stars in far out galaxies. Human beings are perhaps just too complacent on this speck of cosmic dust called the Earth.

But, let’s suppose for a moment that cosmological argument is true and valid philosophically. This argument would, then, prove existence of a ‘cause’ behind creation of universe but not existence of God as the ultimate “Moral Arbiter” of human behavior.

Cosmological argument is not an end in itself. Long chain of reasoning has to continue to add many more attributes to the concept of God, which transforms God into an anthropomorphic entity. Anthropomorphic conception is easy to comprehend but it can be hardly perfect beyond human limitations. This line of reasoning bears out neither existence of Judeo-Islamic monotheistic God nor plurality of Gods that characterizes some other traditions.

Cosmological arguments speculate creation of universe and life without explaining scientific mechanism of creation. Creationists attribute moving finger of God as an explanation as the mechanism of creation. It may be enough to fill the heart of a believer with awe but it is an insufficient reason to satisfy a scientific mind.
Scientific jury is still working on creation of the universe. There was a time when creation of universe was understood in religious or non-religious but certainly mythological terms. Now, with scientific knowledge, we know that it is possible to treat the question of creation of universe and life (cosmological argument) by adhering to scientific principles.

Theory of Abiogenesis (Birth of life from non-life matter) does not have all answers at this time but approach is clear that science will not speculate and settle on mythology. Complacency is a comfort zone for feeble minds only. Whether such queries take human beings to a deity or lack of it, is not important. Scientific approach is important with which quest is undertaken. Theories abound and are discarded if they don’t stand to the rigors of scientific method.

Scientific way is an approach and a thinking style that is diagonally opposite to the one held by believers who perceive unknown and intangible, vastness of universe as infinite, natural calamities as punishment for bad deeds and human achievement as reward from God. It seems as God is elusive as human thought. At times, it is dignified with celebrated historicl names and on other occasions his name is wrapped in inexplicable spirituality. Few words on spirituality too:

Spirituality is mystification of feeling, a subtle peg of believers’ subjectivism and just another name for unknown. There is nothing wrong about it as long as believers keep their piety to themselves and do not heap their spirituality on to others. It is fine if spirituality works for them. Some people like apples and others enjoy oranges.

In psychological terms, I sometimes wonder why it is important to name an unknown. Psychologically, it is hard to live in no-man’s land. Humans even don’t want to die in no-man’s land without identity.

I must add that atheism is also a ‘belief’ for some atheists. In these instances, non-believers share psychological personality traits of a believer. In some situations, I find it hard to make a distinction between the personality of a believer and a non-believer. It makes me think about human nature more than anything else.

A few psychological factors are important to consider. First is individual’s perception of being finite in physical and temporal dimensions. Second, humans are conscious of their own consciousness and the third is human behavior as it relates to others. Historically and culturally, humans have dealt with these psychological issues by ‘externalizing’ their perception of limitedness in the form of God, deity or prime mover without fearing the fact whether any of such conceptions would sustain on rational grounds. This is the bubble of a believer.

This may be an irrational endeavor but as they say, man imagined God, in twilight of emotional reasoning on the image of his own psyche, external to himself to alleviate sense of absurdity that nothingness would force into consciousness. This is the price of being the only animal who is “conscious of his own consciousness”.

Morality argument is a social argument. There is a great deal of research focused on understanding principles of humans’ behavioral evolution. Suffice to say that it is possible to formulate ethics of social behavior without invoking divine. History of human civilization shows, unmistakably, that Babylonian king Hammurabi’s laws devoid of revelations from Judeo-Islamic God were not much different from divine codes written in Torah or Koran. Socrates’ reasoning in Crito would also tender credence to this notion. But I sometime wonder, is it possible for everybody to have sufficient motivation or inspiration to behave ethically or more so altruistically?

From my experience with patients who suffer stroke and brain injury in temporal or frontal lobes, I think it is possible to conclude that human behaviors depends on structural integrity of neuronal-circuits and chemical neurotransmitters of brain. Changes in their ratios in brain with medications alter behaviors too.

Regardless, I am impressed by religionists because they had long discovered ‘punishment and rewards centers’ in human brain that could be activated by sermons of heaven and hell. These centers are so far characterized in monkeys. But I suppose religious technique called “Repetition” must have been stimulating similar centers in human brains as well, to help inspire believers behave ethically and altruistically in certain situations. I am not implying that chanting religious mantras is the only repetition technique available to mankind. Whirling Dervishes in Turkey must have been going round and round for the same reason.

I am not much concerned with the technique used for inspiring somebody to behave ethically or altruistically because I recognize it would be dreadful to live in a society behaving otherwise. I would like to live in a society where ethical behavior and altruism is a norm. I am least concerned whether one gets inspiration for goodness from God or absence of God but I would love to see human beings live in peace, which in the end, is our individual and collective pursuit as a species.