My theology, mark II

Let's try this again.

I'm a religious atheist. What follows is just how I view the world. I'm not trying to present it as fact, but I'm not going to throw in a bunch of IMOs because it'd get tiresome and I think you can figure that out.

Humanity, unique (as far as we know) among life on Earth (and possibly the universe), is sapient. That is, it possesses the ability to think and reason beyond instinctual programming. (Many animals are sentient; many animals can learn. These are not sapience, however.) This causes two problems for us: the problem of absolutes, and the problem of purpose.

The problem of absolutes arises from our need to understand the world around us and learn from it. In order to do so we catalog the material universe into entities like trees, rocks, houses, cars, people. In our mind when we think "tree", we think of a specific image of a specific tree -- this is what I refer to as an absolute (similar to a Platonic ideal). The problem of absolutes is that this ideal tree does not actually exist (everything is relative, as physics has shown us); everything in the material universe is composed of material "flawed" entities (by which I mean not flawed as in bad but as in different or unique). Thinking in absolutes is efficient -- when we see something we term a cat, for example, we can be reasonably certain that if we approach it it will run away -- and we can't actually conceptualize each individual cat as a separate entity in our minds anyway. But since absolutes don't actually exist, there is a fundamental dichotomy between what we think of as reality and what reality actually is. It's a problem without a solution; the best we can do is understand the system and what problems might arise from it. (It seems likely that animals, too, think in absolutes -- at least as much as animals "think" -- but because they are not sapient they cannot recognize the problems presented by this system.)

The problem of purpose is much greater. While the system of absolutes simply means that reality never quite measures up to our mental conception of it, humanity's need for purpose, resulting from our ability to question ourselves, causes people to become fanatics and fundamentalists and mass murderers. It's dangerous. Thus: all life has a purpose, some goal towards which it strives, even if it is simply reproduction and it strives for it only due to instinctual programming. Humans, however, have evolved such complex mental faculties that can recognize this and begin to question it. We seek an objective answer from the universe: why were we created? and, more importantly, what the fuck are we supposed to do now? The problem is that there isn't an answer to this question. Life is not a puzzle or a game; there's no "winning" life (Milton Bradley be damned). To be blunt, we have no purpose -- at least, not in the way that people mean when they ask that question. This, of course, inevitably leads to nihilism and the question "Why bother at all, then?" (The answer to this question being "If you don't want to live, then don't. I, for one, like being alive.")

Ignoring nihilism, then, the only way to deal with the problem of purpose is to make up one. There are many purposes that we make up for ourselves, each and every day -- my purpose is to get a shower, to eat breakfast, to go to work -- along with large purposes -- to get a girlfriend, to get a job, to have children -- and then even greater ones -- to be happy, to be a moral person, to make a shitload of money. Though these don't have a material existence, we treat them like we do any series of similar individual entities -- we conceptualize an absolute for them. This absolute, the perfect purpose, the answer to the ultimate question, is, I would say, the origin of God.

To digress for a moment, tied to our system of absolutes and our need for purpose and also resulting from our sapience is our need to understand the world around us. From learning the mechanics of the universe for the simply purpose of survival (rub two sticks together fast enough and long enough and you can make fire to warm yourself up), to hoping to find some purpose or realization of absolutes, we our instinctively curious towards the nature of the material universe. So, based on the best information we had, we made some explanations up. This, of course, is another origin of God -- God the Creator, as opposed to God the Meaning. They're two sides of the same coin, obviously, but I thought it was worth discussing briefly. I won't go into it further because the How are things? question is one now mostly answered by science, outside of the realm of religion (most of the questions science can't answer, like How was the universe created?, I would guess are unanswerable from our frame of reference). The accompanying question of How should things be? (which is really just another way of asking about purpose, applied to the entire universe) was, is, and always will be the domain of religion (which is why I call this my theology despite it being atheistic: it will eventually get around to describing how I think things should be).

Now, the absolute of God is not an inherently bad idea (even if we don't recognize that it doesn't and can't physically exist). The main issue with religions is that they stop thinking of God as purpose and start thinking of their purpose as serving God. They turn God into a symbol, anthropomorphize it, and dedicate themselves to it -- they begin worshiping an idol. This is, of course, not universal to the religious -- Jesus, a man whom I respect and admire (moreso because he was a man, flawed as each of us, and not a divine entity), often seemed to suggest that his followers should emulate rather than worship him. But anytime someone prays to God, asks God for help, calls upon God to smite the evil-doers -- that is wrong. "Worship no graven idols", the Ten Commandments say. God as an entity is an idol. Worship not.

God as the absolute of purpose becomes something more: the absolute of ego. The absolute ideal of what each of us wants to achieve or be. God is our perfect person. If God is our purpose, rather than worship it we must attempt to achieve it, strive for the absolute ideal that cannot be reached. This is the only true purpose in my eyes: attempting to reach divinity and failing. Descartes said that if there were not a God, it would be necessary to create one -- there isn't, and it is, but we can't, to be pithy.

If that sounds dogmatic, consider that I have not defined what the absolute ideal of God is. It differs for every person; it is simply a term for whatever they most want to achieve or be in life. I have not defined the purpose of life, simply elaborated on a way of thinking about and clarifying the separate purpose of each of us. I will, however, define my personal absolute ideal -- my personal God -- next.

While so far I have attempted to justify my thoughts, basing them in science and logic, that is because all of this has been a philosophy of how things are (the domain of science) rather than of how things should be (the domain of religion). What follows now I pretend no justification for, no reasoning in the material, rational universe. Because what follows is what I view as my purpose -- and as I stated, their is no purpose to be found from the material, rational universe. Okay. Ready?

To me, God represents infinite understanding, infinite faith, and infinite mercy, though I use each of those terms (like God) with a meaning related to but distinct from the common understanding of them. By infinite understanding, while I also refer to science and logic and philosophy, I most especially refer to the understanding of other people. Psychology, in a way, but basically why we do what we do, our motivations from base instincts to conscious goals to supposed higher purposes. By infinite faith, I mean believing in ourselves, each other, and humanity in general (but not God), that we can achieve our goals. This is not blind faith, however; it is faith given with the understanding that as parts of the material, non-absolute universe, we are inherently flawed and fallible, and that we, like all other entities in the universe, will eventually, fall, be corrupted, and die. By infinite mercy, I mean that when we give our faith with the understanding that we will fail, we forgive -- ourselves, each other, and humanity in general -- for doing so.

This theology is somewhat recursive -- when we fail to achieve this purpose (due to it being an unachievable absolute), it asks us to forgive ourselves for failing it -- but I see that as a strength of it.

I should also note that I would define love -- or at least agape, the Greek term Christians occasionally try to monopolize -- as this interpretation of understanding, faith, and mercy, and thus to me God is (infinite) love, as the Christians state.