Godless (26 page)
As I sit up here in heaven and look around, I notice that there is nothing else here besides the objects that I have created and me. I don’t see any other creatures competing with me, nor do I notice anything above me that might have created me, unless it is playing hide-and-seek. In any event, as far as I know (and I supposedly know everything), there is nothing else but me in-three-persons and my creations. I have always existed, you say. I did not create myself because if I did, then I would be greater than myself.
So where did I come from?
I know how you approach that question regarding your own existence. You notice that nature, especially the human mind, displays evidence of intricate design. You have never observed such design apart from a designer. You argue that human beings must have had a creator, and you will find no disagreement from me.
Then, what about me? Like you, I observe that my mind is complex and intricate. It is much more complex than your mind; otherwise, I couldn’t have created your mind. My personality displays evidence of organization and purpose. Sometimes I surprise myself at how wise I am. If you think your existence is evidence of a designer, then what do you think about my existence? Am I not wonderful? Do I not function in an orderly manner? My mind is not a random jumble of disconnected thoughts—it displays what you would call evidence of design. If you need a designer, then why don’t I?
You might think such a question is blasphemy, but to me there is no such crime. I can ask any question I want, and I think this is a fair one. If you say that everything needs a designer and then say that not everything (Me) needs a designer, aren’t you contradicting yourself? By excluding me from the argument, aren’t you bringing your conclusion into your argument? Isn’t that circular reasoning? I am not saying I disagree with your conclusion. How could I? I’m just wondering why it is proper for you to infer a designer while it is not proper for me.
If you are saying that I don’t need to ask where I came from because I am perfect and omniscient while humans are fallible, then you don’t need the design argument at all, do you? You have already assumed that I exist. You can make such an assumption, of course, and I would not deny you the freedom. Such
a priori
and circular reasoning might be helpful or comforting to you, but it does me little good. It doesn’t help me figure out where I came from.
a priori
and circular reasoning might be helpful or comforting to you, but it does me little good. It doesn’t help me figure out where I came from.
You say that I am eternally existent and I might not object to that—if I knew what it meant. It is hard for me to conceive of eternal existence. I just can’t remember back that far. It would take me an eternity to remember back to eternity, leaving me no time to do anything else, so it is impossible for me to confirm if I existed forever. And even if it is true, why is eternal greater than temporal? Is a long sermon greater than a short sermon? What does “greater” mean? Are fat people greater than thin people, or old people greater than the young?
You think it is important that I have always existed. I’ll take your word for it, for now. My question is not with the duration of my existence, but with the origin of my existence. I don’t see how being eternal solves the problem. I still want to know where I came from.
I can only imagine one possible answer, and I would appreciate your reaction. I know that I exist. I know that I could not have created myself. I also know that there is no higher God who could have created me. Since I can’t look above myself, then perhaps I should look below myself for a creator. Perhaps—this is speculative, so bear with me—perhaps you created me.
Don’t be shocked. I mean to flatter you. Since I contain evidence of design, and since I see no other place where such design could originate, I am forced to look for a designer, or designers, in nature itself. You are a part of nature. You are intelligent—that is what your readers say. Why should I not find the answer to my question in you? Help me out on this.
Of course, if you made me, then I could not have made you. The reason that I think I made you is because you made me to think I made you. You have often said that a Creator can put thoughts in your mind. Isn’t it possible that you have put thoughts in my mind, and now here we are, both of us wondering where we came from?
Some of you have said that the answer to this whole question is just a mystery that only God understands. Well, thanks a lot. The buck stops here. On the one hand you use logic to try to prove my existence. On the other hand, when logic hits a dead end you abandon it and invoke “faith” and “mystery.” Those words might be useful to you as placeholders for facts or truth, but they don’t translate to anything meaningful as far as I am concerned. You can pretend that “mystery” signifies something terribly important, but to me it simply means you don’t know.
Some of you assert that I did not “come” from anywhere—that I just exist. I have also heard you say, however, that nothing comes from nothing. You can’t have it both ways. I either exist or I don’t. What was it that caused me to exist, as opposed to not existing at all? If I don’t need a cause, then why do you? Since I am not happy to say that this is a mystery, I must accept the only explanation that makes sense. You created me.
Is that such a terrible idea? I know that you think humans created many other gods: Zeus, Thor, Mercury, Elvis. You recognize that such deities originate in human desire, need or fear. If the blessed beliefs of those billions of individuals can be dismissed as products of culture, then why can’t yours? The Persians created Mithra, the Jews created Yahweh and you created me. If I am wrong about this, please straighten me out.
My next question is this:
Maybe I made myself, maybe some other god made me or maybe you made me—but let’s put that aside for now. I’m here…but why am I here? Many of you look up to me for purpose in life, and I have often stated that your purpose in life is to please me. (Revelation 4:11) If your purpose is to please me, what is my purpose? To please myself? Is that all there is to life?
If I exist for my own pleasure, then this is selfish. It makes it look as if I created you merely to have some living toys to play with. Isn’t there some principle that I can look up to? Something to admire, adore and worship? Am I consigned for eternity to sit here and amuse myself with the worship of others? Or, to worship myself? What’s the point?
I have read your writings on the meaning of life and they make sense in the theological context of human religious goals, even if they don’t have much practicality in the real world. Many of you feel that your purpose in life is to achieve perfection. Since you humans fall way short of perfection, by your own admission (and I agree), then self-improvement provides you with a quest. It gives you something to do. Someday you hope to be as perfect as you think I am. But since I am already perfect, by definition, then I don’t need such a purpose. I’m just sort of hanging out, I guess.
Yet I still wonder why I’m here. It feels good to exist. It feels great to be perfect. But it gives me nothing to do. I created the universe with all kinds of natural laws that govern everything from quarks to galactic clusters, and it runs okay on its own. I had to make these laws, otherwise I would be involved with a lot of repetitive busy work such as pulling light rays through space, yanking falling objects down to earth, sticking atoms together to build molecules and a trillion other boring tasks more worthy of a slave than a master. You have discovered most of those laws and might be on the verge of putting the whole picture together. Once you have done that you will know what I know: that there is nothing in the universe for me to do. It’s boring up here.
I could create more universes and more laws, but what’s the point? I’ve already done universes. Creation is like sneezing or writing short stories; it just comes out of me. I could go on an orgy of creation. Create, create, create. After a while a person can get sick of the same thing, like when you eat a whole box of chocolates and discover that the last piece doesn’t taste as good as the first. Once you have had 10 children, do you need 20? (I’m asking you, not the pope.) If more is better, then I am obligated to continue until I have fathered an infinite number of children and an endless number of universes. If I must compel myself, then I am a slave.
Many of you assert that it is inappropriate to seek purpose within yourself, that it must come from outside. I feel the same way. I can’t merely assign purpose to myself. If I did, then I would have to look for my reasons. I would have to come up with an account of why I chose one purpose over another, and if such reasons came from within myself I would be caught in a loop of self-justified rationalizations. Since I have no Higher Power of my own, then I have no purpose. Nothing to live for. It is all meaningless.
Sure, I can bestow meaning on you—pleasing me, achieving perfection, whatever—and perhaps that is all that concerns you. But doesn’t it bother you, just a little, that the source of meaning for your life has no source of its own? And if this is true, then isn’t it also true that ultimately you have no meaning for yourself either? If it makes you happy to demand an external reference point on which to hang your meaningfulness, why would you deny the same to me? I also want to be happy, and I want to find that happiness in something other than myself. Is that a sin?
On the other hand, if you think I have the right and the freedom to find happiness in myself and in the things I created, then why should you not have the same right? You, whom I created in my image?
I know that some of you have proposed a solution to this problem. You call it “love.” You think I am lonely up here and that I created humans to satisfy my longing for a relationship with something that is not myself. Of course, this will never work because it is impossible for me to create something that is not part of myself, but let’s say that I try anyway. Let’s say that I create this mechanism called “free will,” which imparts to humans a choice. If I give you the freedom (though this is stretching the word because there is nothing outside of my power) not to love me, then if some of you, a few of you, even one of you chooses to love me, I have gained something I might not have had. I have gained a relationship with someone who could have chosen otherwise. This is called love, you say.
This is a great idea, on paper. In real life, however, it turns out that billions of people have chosen not to love me, and that I have to do something with these infidels. I can’t just un-create them. If I simply destroy all the unbelievers, I may as well have created only believers in the first place. Since I am omniscient, I would know in advance which of my creations would have a tendency to choose me. This would produce no conflict with free will since those who would not have chosen me would have been eliminated simply by not having been created in the first place. (I could call it Supernatural Selection.) This seems much more compassionate than hell.
You can’t have a love relationship with someone who is not your equal. If you humans don’t have a guaranteed eternal soul, like me, then you are worthless as companions. If I can’t respect your right to exist independently, and your right to choose something other than me, then I couldn’t love those of you who do choose me. I would have to find a place for all those billions of eternal souls who reject me, whatever their reasons might be. Let’s call it “hell,” a place that is not-God, not-me. I would have to create this inferno, otherwise neither the unbelievers nor I could escape each other. Let’s ignore the technicalities of how I could manage to create hell and then separate it from myself, apart from whom nothing else exists. (It’s not as though I could create something and then simply throw it away—there is no cosmic trash heap.) The point is that since I am supposedly perfect, this place of exile must be something that is the opposite. It must be ultimate evil, pain, darkness and torment.
If I created hell, then I don’t like myself.
And if I did create a hell, then it certainly would not be smart to advertise that fact. How would I know if people were claiming to love me for my own sake, or simply to avoid punishment? How can I expect someone to love me who is afraid of me? The threat of eternal torment might scare some people into obedience, but it does nothing to inspire love. If you treated me with threats and intimidation, I would have to reconsider my admiration for your character.
How would you feel if you had brought some children into the world knowing that they were going to be tormented eternally in a place you built for them? Could you live with yourself? Wouldn’t it have been better not to have brought them into the world in the first place?
I know that some of you feel that hell is just a metaphor. Do you feel the same way about heaven?
Anyway, this whole love argument is wrong. Since I am perfect, I don’t lack anything. I can’t be lonely. I don’t need to be loved. I don’t even want to be loved because to want is to lack. To submit to giving and receiving love is to admit that I can be hurt by those who choose not to love me. If you can hurt me, I am not perfect. If I can’t be hurt, I can’t love. If I ignore or erase those who do not love me, sending them off to hell or oblivion, then my love is not sincere. If all I am doing is throwing the dice of “free will” and simply reaping the harvest of those who choose to love me, then I am a selfish monster. If you played such games with people’s lives, I would call you insensitive, conceited, insecure, selfish and manipulative.
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