Click here for the first part of this series: How Do We Know God is Real?
Even though our condition might truly be as “ego-bound” as Part 1 described it (see link above), we still manage to speak of God. We all do this.
Even though our condition might truly be as “ego-bound” as Part 1 described it (see link above), we still manage to speak of God. We all do this.
Simply consider how common it is to hear the phrase shruggingly spoken, “God only knows,” for example. As in, God only knows how long this warm weather’s going to last. What is this phrase, if not a shorthand for expressing our shared perception that the uncertain is somehow certain after all, and that everything unknown is still ordered and guided by some kind of greater will? The frequency with which people use and accept this and similar phrases suggests that the meaning of the phrase is held to be at least plausible, if not self-evidently true.
But the words we speak casually are symptomatic of something deeper. More significant than what our outward verbal expressions reveal is the way that all of us rely upon God for the very foundation of our thinking. The most basic premises that underlie the ways we think about ourselves and think about the world are based on the expectation that God exists.
An old saying goes: “It takes a lot of faith to be an atheist.” The truth of this is found in the fact that the atheist—the one who believes that the world and his own self came into existence and keeps on existing without God—must then by extension believe that certain assumptions are wrong that his own mind seemingly cannot help but to embrace.
But the words we speak casually are symptomatic of something deeper. More significant than what our outward verbal expressions reveal is the way that all of us rely upon God for the very foundation of our thinking. The most basic premises that underlie the ways we think about ourselves and think about the world are based on the expectation that God exists.
An old saying goes: “It takes a lot of faith to be an atheist.” The truth of this is found in the fact that the atheist—the one who believes that the world and his own self came into existence and keeps on existing without God—must then by extension believe that certain assumptions are wrong that his own mind seemingly cannot help but to embrace.
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For example, we have ideas. A person gets a concept, picture, or connection within her mind that wasn’t there before. This is an idea. Few of us doubt that we have experienced this phenomenon. Similarly, we have thoughts. We make decisions through reasoned analysis. Sometimes, we even make decisions based upon ideas that have come to mind. We mentally choose—each one of us does this. We compare competing alternatives by using our reasoning and our imagination to forecast which choice will lead to the outcome we like best. We make up our minds and then we change our minds. We all do these things, and we all are aware that others do these things, too.
So where does all of this thinking come from?
It’s not an idle question. If there is no conscious will that created the universe, then everything in the universe happens without anything willing it. By default, everything happens because of unwilled or “random” events. Subatomic particles collide with other particles at random, or waves intersect other waves, and the result sometimes is that the collisions and intersections produce events that can lead to other events.
A waterfall, for example, could be seen as the product of random events in this way. The waterfall might seem like something distinct and singular, but in fact it is just the result of various sorts of collisions. Random interactions over time produced the planets, produced the landscape of a particular continent, produced the rainfall, produced the rocks as well as the earthquake that left a sharp cliff, and then produced the course of the river that sends the water cascading over this cliff. The waterfall is the result of an uncountably vast number of random events in this way, and to believe that there is no supreme being creating the universe is to believe that everything in the universe—including you and all your thinking—was produced exactly the same way.
That is, random electronic firings in your parents’ brains mixed with whatever experiences they had randomly encountered up to that point in order to generate the belief that they should have you. The random events surrounding you have then produced your life and your experiences so far. In fact, random collisions of electrons in your own brain even produced the most recent thought you had, perhaps the thought to continue reading to the end of this sentence. Precisely like the waterfall, your own self—or the thing you think of as a “self”—is just an undirected end product that is cascading along on collisions.
But no, you might say, there is something more than that. There is a will in the universe, and it is my own will. Though the waterfall is not conscious, I am. I do have a self. I make decisions. Randomness does result in what is—but one of the things that randomness has produced is human consciousness. Human beings have this consciousness, and each human being exercises a will.
The basis of this argument is that the waterfall is different from the human being. More specifically, the waterfall is different from “consciousness.” That waterfall, as complex as it is, cannot take credit for having decided to do anything that it does. It is the product of external events and external events still drive everything about it. But the “consciousness,” by this argument, can take credit for what it does. It arose from randomness, yes—but randomness no longer drives it, because a self is in control.
How, then, did the randomness take this leap into selfhood?
To assume that consciousness arose out of random events is to assume that somewhere, sometime, there occurred the very first conscious thought. What were the circumstances that led to this thought? Presumably there had been nothing in the world up to that point except random collisions and their results. If so, then this random cascade created the first thought.
But wait! If this thought was only the latest result of the latest random collision, then it could not be considered a “conscious” thought at all. A “self” must have thought the thought in order for it to be a conscious thought. So where, again, did this “self” come from?
You might finally say, “I have no problem with the contradiction. I fully acknowledge that the universe we perceive is not all there is. Our ‘selves’ are greater than the material world. I am a spiritual person—I certainly have a sense of this. However, that does not mean I believe in a single great ruling ‘God’ per se.”
This is the belief in the transcendent self. It is a compelling belief, given the way our time-bound linear lives seem too small to contain the totality of all that we feel ourselves to be. This provision of ample space for a more abundant view of the other self therefore feels like it answers the puzzle of consciousness—but the answer is incomplete.
This “ample space”—where is it? The transcendent self has a different existence from the way we understand existence, yet still is must exist (for lack of a better word) “somewhere.” That is, it exists in some “place” (again, lacking a better word), in that it emerges from and remains connected to some different sort of realm that also transcends the material world.
If so—if the above description at least partially and crudely expresses the nature of the transcendent self—then what is the origin of this transcendent realm?
Specifically, did a conscious will create the transcendent realm? If not, if the transcendent self is instead just the result of an ongoing series of unwilled “random” transcendent events, then one cannot take credit for having a conscious transcendent self either.
In short, no matter where you put the “I,” the “I” does not exist. This is true whether the universe is random or whether heaven and earth are random together. Either way, the randomness means that you speak falsely whenever you say that “I” decided something, because there is no “I” that is able to decide. All of your thoughts and ideas instead just come from collisions. Every opinion you hold comes from the same thing—ultimately the opinion is just the product of electrons among your neurons happening to go one way instead of another. Even this very feeling of being a self, this feeling you carry with you all the time, is also a result of electronic collisions. You are not a self—not really. You just feel that way. You feel like you decide things, but in fact you have no autonomy. Instead you are just flowing downstream on the course of random interactions that have never been consciously influenced by you or anyone else.
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This idea is more than just disquieting, more than just dispiriting. Part of the horror of this idea is that it implies that a living human being is no better than a corpse. Neither one is conscious, after all—and both are equally subject to random events.
We seem viscerally opposed to this idea.
And in fact, the reason we object relates to a second basic assumption that our minds seemingly cannot help but to embrace. We have already seen that we believe we think thoughts. In addition, we also believe that some things are better than other things.
A human being is inherently “better” than a corpse, for example. A living organism is inherently “better” than a thing that does not live. Some monster might disagree with those statements, but that monster would still share the premise that there are things that are “better.” And like the idea that I am an autonomous self, this idea also is incompatible with a universe that has no creator.
