Would you rather be the author or one of the characters?
Here’s my column for the Freethinker for this month. It’s another wallop at that idea that religion alone can give people [a sense of] meaning.
The most obvious flaw is that it’s not at all clear how God does a better job of providing “meaning” than anything else does. How is that even supposed to work? How exactly is it more meaningful to be a character in a story someone else creates rather than the protagonist of the story you create? How, that is, is that more meaningful to us, as opposed to the people who administer the story?
It’s easy to see why priests and mullahs find that story rich with meaning: it makes them important characters, who shape and guard and share the story. But that would apply to anyone who came up with a colourful fantasy about super-humans in the sky who have a Plan for human beings. They’re like rival screenwriters and producers, competing for whose story gets to be a film or television series that grabs the imagination of millions.
And we’re the audience. It seems quite a lot more meaningful to be ourselves the authors and producers and show runners, wouldn’t you say?
In the sillier types of Protestant Christianity, Jesus is supposed to love and care for you personally and be your best friend. I guess having the creator of the universe for a best friend imparts a sense of importance, as long as you don’t think too hard about the fact that he’s also besties with everybody else. Surely that attenuates the specialness somewhat.
Isn’t it the height of arrogance to set yourself up above God and those He has chosen as his messengers (aka enforcers) and decide that you alone are the arbiter of what is meaningful for you?
I guess that being powerless, or feeling that way, can make a person hope someone else is writing their story. When you cannot find a happy ending for yourself and all the plot twists look bleak, being the one creating your story doesn’t feel all that meaningful or good.
@Samantha Vimes #3
Despite my cynical sarcastic comment, I have to say that as an ex-believer, I do sometimes miss having the assurance that despite all the crap happening around me, everything will turn out OK in the end
@Lady Mondegreen #1
An infinite God would have the capacity to be best friends with everyone. So while it might attenuate the specialness, it doesn’t necessarily make the friendship less valuable (except for people who are impressed by the inherent worth of exclusivity).
Samantha Vimes, yes, you hit the nail on the head.
An underrated aspect is that it’s not always just about yourself and your own, private happy ending. You know: “No man is an island” and all this stuff. Even if you are amazingly good at finding meaning in your own life, there is always this worry about others. So many lives seem just cruel and meaningless; so many victims are dead, with no way of recompensing the sensless suffering – is there really nothing to be done about this? Really nothing, except creating your own, small, oh-so-important egotistic “story”?
(Obviously my question is rhetorical, ok? And, Theo Bromine, I’m also speaking as an ex-believer.)
@Samantha Vimes#3, excellent point.
@Theo Bromine #4, I realize that, but there’s still a tension there between “my personal best friend” and “infinite god who loves everyone (all the billions and billions, past, present and future) equally.” It’s that old fault line between the personal god and the infinite, omnipotent god posited by sophisticated theologists, the one that evolves when worldviews outgrow the simpler, naive deity.
LM @ 1
I’d rather be friends with a Hub from the Culture. (any Iain M Banks fans out there?)
TB @ 2
So I have been told.
The OP refers to religion, but only discusses monotheism, though all versions purportedly provide meaning to their adherents.
Hmm. One of the things that made me realize that if there is a god, there is no reason to believe that they intervene is that I could believe that the bad things happening to me would be worth it, but I couldn’t believe certain other things were part of a plan. Reading about cystic fibrosis, specifically, was a turning point for me.
#1 Lady Mondegreen
When I was a teen, I found tremendous comfort during hard times (teenage melodrama shenanigans) in the idea that the universe itself was looking out for me, despite not being a believer. I knew it was simply a fanciful daydream, but even knowing that I still found some comfort, in a very similar way that reminiscing about a cherished childhood pet or friend or [etc] can do the same despite knowing that the pet died years ago. It was a mild escape, that I voluntarily bought into now and then.
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#2 Theo Bromine
Surely it is entirely reasonable for a person to decide for themselves what they find meaningful to their lives? Or did you mean that it is arrogant for a person to decide what is meaningful for other people?
@Holms #10
I was (sarcastically) parroting standard theistic rhetoric – from that perspective, a person does not, in fact, have the right to decide for themselves what is meaningful for them. After all, what right does the clay have to question the potter?
Lady Mondegreen @1: And Evangelical girls get to have Jesus as a boyfriend. (From reading of Libby-Anne’s blog, not personal experience.)
One of the things about this meaning in your life that I find notable is how it is able to elevate you in importance, often with the believer being totally oblivious to this An example:
I was once reading a conversation going on among members of a group I belonged to, and they were talking about “mentioning God”. It started out silly and ended sillier, but meaner. The first person started the conversation by “apologizing” for mentioning God on an earlier conversation, because she didn’t want to break any laws, but she couldn’t just turn off her incredible responsibility to God. (It was totally silly to think there was any law broken; this is a group that has a 501C3, but that doesn’t preclude private individuals from saying goddy things). One of the other women came in to comfort her, and the siliness progressed until it ultimately erupted in unwitting meanness. One of the women commented that her life was saved by God. When she was born (65 years ago), she almost died because of her mother’s eclampsia, but someone in the room noted that she was actually moving slightly and massaged her back to life. This was, in her words, God saving her life because she had an important duty to fulfill. This duty? She is a writer – of romance novels. So, basically, God foresaw the extreme shortage of romance writers we were going to have in the early 20th century, and saved her life.
The meanness I saw in this? I was at that moment taking a break from preparing a lecture on infectious diseases, where I had been inserting notes in my lecture about the number of children dying of malaria every year in Africa. I had a few slides earlier been discussing the death rate of children from starvation. What she was saying (without realizing it) is that her life was more important to God than these millions of children who will die a very unpleasant death, and that their life would be a waste of time alongside her great contribution by serving the need of people who like to read Western Christian Romance novels (yes, that’s her full genre – I didn’t know there was such a grouping until I met her).
In addition, this woman had worked for many years as a nurse. If I were going to look for a purpose in her life, I would think that nursing, which makes the lives of others better, would be by far the higher purpose. I am a writer myself, but I suspect my teaching and scientific research have contributed more benefit to more people than my writing, therefore making that a somewhat stronger purpose. It seems to me that this woman took her own purpose (which is writing, which is what she likes best) and attributes that to God’s purpose for her. How is that different than my determining my own meaning in life?
Don’t forget the all too common unconscious dismissiveness toward the medical professional who actually saved her life. Apparently that would simply not have happened if not for God arranging the universe to make that person put their training into action.
Yes, Holms, that had not escaped my attention. I would much rather have a doctor who spends his time studying than one that spends his time praying!