In the latest issue of the New York Review, Cathleen Schine reviews Levels of Life, a new book by Julian Barnes. It’s described as a three-part meditation on grief, following the death of Barnes’s wife Pat Kavanagh.
One of the things that is of no solace to Barnes (and there are many) is religion. He writes:
When we killed–or exiled–God, we also killed ourselves…. No God, no afterlife, no us. We were right to kill Him, of course, this long-standing imaginary friend of ours. And we weren’t going to get an afterlife anyway. But we sawed off the branch we were sitting on. And the view from there, from that height–even if it was only an illusion of a view–wasn’t so bad.
I can’t disagree. Atheists often proclaim the death of God in positively gleeful terms, but it’s important to recognize what was lost–a purpose in living, a natural place in the universe. The loss is not irretrievable; there is nothing that stops us from creating our own meaning even if there’s no supernatural overseer to hand one to us. But it’s a daunting task, one to which we haven’t really faced up.
Funny, folks on both sides think they know so much.
Read Sean B. Carrolls book “Brave Genius”,
a biography of two men Albert Camus and Jaques Monod
who recognized the absurdity of life yet created purpose in
their lives without God. Although they lived through
difficult times, following their sense of commitment would
enrich anyone’s life, however unremarkable or unchallenged
by circumstance.
We killed god when religion became an organized business that employed fallible human beings who instead of working for god-on too many occasions to name, took advantage of the ‘flock’ .
I think if there was a way to go back to ask the very first humans on earth they would tell you that ‘god’ was a personal thing before it grew into a franchise….they might even agree with you that god was a branch, but a branch that can only carry a single person at a time-because the view from this place resided in one heart at a time.
If god has any chance of ‘coming back’ it will be on that single branch, without preachers, or choirs, or bowls full of coin but who knows if people are unselfish enough to let it happen on its own.
My answer is actually addressed to Julian Barnes and others in similar situation.
“When we killed–or exiled–God, we also killed ourselves. No God, no afterlife, no us. We were right to kill Him, of course, this long-standing imaginary friend of ours. And we weren’t going to get an afterlife anyway. But we sawed off the branch we were sitting on. And the view from there, from that height–even if it was only an illusion of a view–wasn’t so bad.” If your atheism is based on assumed conflict between science and religion, I can recommend a way out! Hinduism does not have any conflict whatsoever with science.You may want to read about it. This post would be too short to explain it.
Sorry, Sean, too many wars and killings in the name of a God. There should be no discomfort in accepting the truth and our reality. We should be facing death as part of our path in the only universe we know.
Sean — I feel much as you do concerning religion, preferring reasoned philosophy to a belief system of received wisdom. However, we really have no idea what the universe is, how it got this way, or why it is “mathematical”. Our perceptions are severely limited, and thus our conclusions. We should bear in mind that nothing, absolutely nothing that we know to date precludes a “higher power” calling the shots, unlikely as that may seem. Be gentle with those who must depend on received wisdom to explain their existence. If it floats their boat …… Russ Paul, Whidbey Island, WA 8 Dec ’13
re: ..what was lost–a purpose in living
Wrong. Now it’s up to each individual to give their life purpose. “We” decide what’s important and how we’ll spend our time and energy. A daunting task, no doubt. And a responsibility most don’t want. Or can’t handle. Takes the courage of your convictions and the ability to trust your own reasoning. Not for the faint of heart.
I view the “death of god” as hugely liberating. We can now experience life free of dogma and the confusion of false beliefs. Life is so much more exciting when you figure it out for your self. I am 71 years old; I was raised by a devout Southern Baptist father. When I was 3 years old I told my mother I would no longer say my prayers. I was forced against my will to attend church regularly until I left home at 17 to get an excellent science education. I abhor the oppressive browbeating I suffered at the hands of religious fundamentalists and I rejoice in the freedom of my mind.
I find it strange that atheists can be so certain the have “killed” God with such late second millennia Weltanschauung as the demonstration that the universe is tens of billions of years old and the reality of evolutionary processes and a well worked out (albeit still quite incomplete) understanding of many aspects of theoretical physics.
The only thing that looks “vanquished” to me is the notion that Jewish exiles of the 6 century B.C. writing in the wake of the Babylonian Captivity could have a well worked out / coherent and consistent grasp of where the world came from. Obviously the could not do so.
I did see a video of your video talk in which you with Hawking firmly made the assertion that there is no God…
I would in opposition counter argue that the real reality is that higher order “emergent” symbolic processing systems drive the phyical world around in much more (I would say indeed very much more *fundamental*) a sense as the laws of physics govern the world. We see this everyday in our life… physical reductionism does not “solve” any mystery of the way of the world operates, and those who rely on reductionist reasoning to advance arguments about what reality in fact is often fundamentally and completely miss the core drivers of phenomena – which themselves are “emergent” epiphenomena – totally unreachable from mere understanding of the underlying physical reductionist mindset.
If you are convinced “science” (and by that I mean here overconfident and missing the core drivers of the human condition physical reductionism) has disproved God… well I would recommend that you read say Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics, or Douglas Richard Hofstadter I Am a Strange Loop or maybe perhaps David Brook’s the Social Animal, and you will find very much that the arguments that try to understand the cosmos from a strictly physically reductionist camps have in fact many critical flaws.
Cybernetics is a new science, and we are only are scratching the surface these days in our theories regarding how distributed feedback control systems actually operate. I think if you would spend time contemplating what Norbert Wiener discovered and Douglas Hofstadter extended you might clue into the notion that God isn’t nearly as “dead” as the physical reductionist camp might so boldly like to claim.
The profundity of Cybernetics is poorly understood to this day, and the implication of this school of thought is still working its way through contemporary scientific thought. I think what Norbert Wiener started is every bit as “fundamental” to the core nature of reality than what Einstein discovered about the nature of space time – if people understood control theory / Cybernetics better rather than adopting a hopeless stance of “explaining” reality via physical reductionism they may find that the theoretical physicists proud assertion that God is slain via “science” is based on a pretty slipshod sort of reasoning, one that in its reductionism fails explain or understand really any of the core driving forces of the day to day world that we inhabit.
GOD is not a ‘being’ like us, who can be “killed” &/or “exiled”. By GOD is implied THAT which existed before the ‘existence’; and which will remain even after all that ‘exists’ NOW, becomes non-existent! We are in IT!!! In other words, we are nothing but simply a ‘part’ of GOD. This is what the Vedic sages imply when they declare : “Aham Bramhasmi”… I AM GOD.
By denying GOD one denies one’s own self. Vedas declare this “Avidya”, or ‘Ignorence’, which is at the root of all misery!!!
Interestingly, ‘ignorence’ is considered to be ‘bliss’ by some!!!
And there are believers who, though they SAY they believe in an afterlife, actually harbor serious DOUBTS, which renders the consolation value of the beyond rather tepid. David Hume addresses this notion rather well in his –An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding–he said, “You find certain phenomena in nature. You seek a cause or author. You imagine you have found him. You afterwards become so enamored of this offspring of your brain, that you imagine it impossible, but he must produce something greater and more perfect than the present scene of things, which is so full of ill and disorder.”
That we can in this life make a positive difference in people’s lives (and have no other life in which we may do so) is a great consolation, for it means we can make a difference in this so very precious and so very short lifetime.
It might be worth to add that despite how false or illusory any worldview was with god for many, the emotions coinciding with it were real emotions. The feelings that stem from “losing god” are also quite real and potentially painful, depressing, and overwhelming. Or at least I certainly perceived those feelings as quite real when it happened to me.
I also do not think it would be too presumptive to say that people have varying degrees of psychological fortitude on this. What I mean is that although many, as seen in these comments, find the non-existence of god a non-issue from a completely rational viewpoint, that stoicism simply does not translate to humanity as a whole just because. It may even be possible that some people are particularly ill-suited to life without some conception of god. This is not to say that a proactive rational response is not warranted, but if we really want to advance past the superstitions of humanity’s youth, acknowledging the human aspect of a life without god is important. And part of that is that, for now, the loss of god as a concept and belief, for many or some, forever or for a while, can bloody suck.
And Sean, by the way, this is one reason I’ve always appreciated your writings and talks. Although you’re proactive with your naturalistic beliefs, I also think you’ve treaded with some due softness not found in some of your contemporaries. And as Shakespeare says, after all, “Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams.”
So true. Recommended relevant reading is “The great partnership” by Sir Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.
The price of love is grief and the one left sitting at the table gets the check.
No church or anything else can eliminate all sadness and misery. Naturalism explains this, religion can never explain it.
Only humans can provide the human values that we treasure. Actually we’re pretty good at it – if we want to be.
And a good poem on the subject is Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold.
I haven’t read the book, so all I see is the small quotation. ,y comment here may be off-kilter for lack of context. But here goes.
Kids are usually taught the religion of their parents. Being taught a religion means you’re shown writings about the religion and trained in the observances. So my teachers read books to me, essentially, and taught me prayer and catechism. They wisely avoided telling me, a child of the twentieth century, that adults are expected to take the stuff in Genesis literally. They also, the very same Catholic teacher in my case, taught me the basics of evolution and geology.
I never spontaneously prayed, it was just something you did in school (in the UK) and at church. I grew out of religion, the science stayed with me and grew, because it makes sense.
How can I lose what I never had? We’re human so we make sense of stuff, but religion is far from being adequate to the task. What kind of solace could I have taken in nonsense, that I do not already have inside me as a consequence of my experiences as a human being?
God loves you, he does exist and he knows that you have been deceived into having doubt.
The following video details explanations of phenomena formulated by people from various scholarly fields. While some are not quite accurate, or fall a little short of what we would deem sufficient scientific scrutiny, the reason for this is the shear number scientific fields that just a handful of people are trying to explain and prove, with very limited funding, contrasted with the currently massive education system in place.
Despite this, they still manage to produce a coherent enough of a reality that does seem to match current worldwide events.This along with the knowledge that the truth is being masked by the very beasts most world religious biblical texts and thousands of ancient cultures all refer to to continually enhance those doubts, and to make mockery of the truth.
Turn to Jesus, let your true spiritual being into your very self. You will be more rewarded when you accept the truth into your life than you could imagine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtBz1roiQR8
When Nietzsche said that God was dead, it was not gleeful or even with any sense of satisfaction. It was more of a warning: he’s dead, but now we have to acknowledge it and deal with that fact, in all corners of society. There was even sadness to see the old muse of the arts gone (though maybe less in his later works). But he was confident we could do better.
If you lack purpose and comfort in your life you will find that a dog works just as well as a god and is easier to believe in.
I wonder how much ease religion can really bring. When I did believe, it was a source of some comfort (mainly because I thought that people who had horrible lives finally got something better in heaven) but also it was a source of anxiety. Both directly, because I was Catholic and felt perpetually guilty, and indirectly, because if you know your main source of comfort doesn’t hold up to investigation, you become afraid of losing it. I suppose there must be people who feel very differently.
But for me, the thing that is truly comforting is science. When I get stressed out about things, I imagine how ancient are all the atoms that make up my body, and how they were made in stars and flung across space, and it really does make problems seem smaller. I can’t rely on the idea of heaven to make me feel better about the terrible conditions in which some people live, but giving to decent charities helps more than religion ever did.
As to grief, I admit I don’t know. I find something comforting in the idea that death is the absolute end of things, and there is just nothing. I suppose because it means we will never experience death, we will only ever know what it is to be alive. So far that’s how I’ve felt when friends and relatives have died, but I can’t say I will always feel that way. I think believing that death is the end and you don’t get to say anything after, can make you aware of how you’re treating people when they’re still alive. Because in a way your comfort has to come from the fact that they had a good life.
This film may open your eyes, if it hasn’t done yet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_from_Death
Thinking back to the billions of worlds post, I wonder how other intelligent life would treat the question of God and meaning.
Would every civilization go through a phase of belief in God and abandon it for science?
Would other civilizations find a way of reconciling the two?
Would religion be peculiar to us?
Would science be peculiar to us?
I’m very sorry to learn of Julian’s loss. I haven’t read the referenced work, but maybe Julian might find some reality based comfort of the sort Hofstadter recounts in “I am a Strange Loop” following the death of his wife.
Wes,
“science … suggests that consciousness emerges from matter whereas Buddhists suggest the opposite.”
Or they are part of a unitary phenomenon.
Fundamentally I believe mind and matter are simply different ways of describing a unitary phenomenon. From common experience, mind seems very different from matter Matter seems hard and out there in the world. Mind seems intangible. Perception seems to be reaction to matter and to have qualities we cannot be sure we share with others. Is your “red” the same as my “red”? Thoughts, fantasy, and ideas seem even more disconnected from matter. Yet we know from modern physics that matter – even the solid objects of our experience – is mostly empty space occupied by particles that in many cases might be better described as waves. Matter, in fact, seems to be not the hard thing out there but instead layers of structure built over more layers of structure – structure all the way down. Particles are built from quanta, atoms built from particles, molecules built from atoms, the material of life built from molecules, and the brain and nervous system built from life. Mind probably didn’t suddenly appear in the brain and nervous system at the last stage. Whatever material mind consists of it operates at all of the stages. Mind is not something that exists apart from the universe but something that pervades it. It may be more the communication infrastructure of the universe that allows the layers of structure to be built than the illusion or epiphenomenon that conventional materialism regards it to be. In that case, it would be as real and material as what we normally think of as matter.
FYI
My last comment was relating to a comment by Wes about Buddhism that seemingly has vanished now.