DOUBLE PLUS UNGOD
Religion bad! Humans good!
In which I disagree that the positive social or spiritual contributions of religion make any difference to whether it is a ‘good thing’.
[Note: throughout I use the term ‘you’ but don’t take this totally personally, whoever you are!]
After all, belief in Santa Claus is a ‘good thing’ for children, it makes them happy and maybe even makes them less naughty and more nice (for a few weeks in December at least). As such, it is a lie adults are happy to perpetuate, but none of them choose it for themselves.
I think there is a strong parallel to be found in many of the liberal apologias for religion; ‘it isn’t necessarily true but it’s good for society’, ‘my own faith is complex but churches shouldn’t confuse people with subtle points of theology’.
In my view, if you are religious then you are obliged to grapple with the theology. More than that I’d say you are obliged to be a fundamentalist. You believe in an absolute, you believe in good and evil, right and wrong. You ought to be able to apply this to everything, you ought to try. After all you believe that there is a hell of a lot at stake (not just life and death, but eternal life or death.) Your initial assumption, that God exists (and happens to be of your denomination) is such a massive claim. It goes against all the available evidence. It massively complicates the world around us. Raising extremely difficult questions:
If the answers come down to a matter of faith, then I have one more question for you: why should anyone else in the entire world agree with you? Because it’s true? You haven’t established that! Either everyone must agree with you or else no one is obliged to. And if you disagree with the extremism, then you must retreat to a totally personal religious standpoint. You may not be totally permissive of other points of view (I’m not) but you cannot argue from religious premises (you’ve admitted that people can have their own interpretation of matters spiritual).
By contrast, if you have no religion you are obliged to be liberal. All knowledge is provisional. Every decision must be won by reasoned debate, not appeal to authority. There is a method for establishing not what is true, but what is our best approximation to the truth. It’s called the scientific method. And this is where I get absolutist; I challenge anyone to come up with some problem not amenable to the scientific method.
I don’t think any moral imperatives need to be predicated on theological grounds. There are (or at least ought to be) rational reasons for the laws of the land. Similarly for the arrangement of society. Most particularly for your personal conduct. Look for the human reason for doing what you are doing, look for your inner motives, question yourself. There is no outside authority, you are the final arbiter of your actions, you are responsible. So is everyone else. Society is built up from personal freedom AND personal responsibility.
“What about the meaning of life?” I hear you cry. (I‘m sobbing a little myself.) But if living in a godless world means that life has no meaning then so be it. This doesn’t make me want to jump off a tall building, it is just another challenge. After all nothing is certain so maybe I haven’t found it yet? And if there is no god then there can be no afterlife. This life is the only place you will ever find meaning. If you get my meaning.