I really didn’t want my blog to be a journal of my “journey” through depression. (For accuracy, replace “journey” with “death march” and “depression” with “shit hurricane”) But when it is affecting me it’s really hard to think about anything else. And I always feel the need to bear witness somehow, to express myself even if nobody is reading it.
But I think it’s about time to get this thing back on track. Since I have forgotten what I originally intended to discuss in the bulk of this article (oh blessed ADHD!) let me talk a little bit about some of my current thoughts on God.
It occurs to me that the famous writers of the Enlightenment, when they did not completely deny the existence of God, mostly conceived him/it as an abstract being, omnipotent, omniscient, behind the scenes of the material world in some fashion. There is the famous idea of the clockmaker who winds the clock he has made and then just lets it run.
I think this conception grew out of medieval scholasticism, which tried to use rational arguments to prove the existence of God and illuminate his qualities.
It is always tempting, for those who wish to reconcile reason and faith, to picture God as an immaterial abstraction: perfect, all-encompassing, infinite. It’s a bit embarrassing for those with neat and rational minds to picture a god who walks around on earth, has hands and a face, feels anger and jealousy, and does things in the material universe–which implies making a decision, planning, and carrying out an action. He seems a little too much like Zeus. The minute you begin telling stories about God he becomes a human-size figure.
It’s much easier for the modern rationalist to believe in a God with only abstract qualities like existence, omniscience, and perfection. Especially when you are trying to laugh away the gods of the native peoples you are in the process of conquering.
But it is a small step from believing in an abstraction to believing in nothing. An infinite and diffuse being is hard to imagine, and difficult to connect with or feel anything about. And if the universe pretty much runs on its own, it is easy to decide that God is not necessary as an explanation for anything. “I have no need of that hypothesis” as Laplace reportedly said.
It fascinates me that the Enlightenment figures were persecuted for discounting the existence of God. Spreading atheism was a crime. The ruling classes, and often the Enlightenment thinkers themselves, thought that without a belief in divine punishment or reward the people would become ungovernable and chaos would reign. But that’s a topic for another time.
Black Hole Radiation 