What is the meaning of life? Does God exist? Even all the way over here, I can here you groan at the start of another convoluted and essentially useless blog entry. But wait. For once, I’m going to agree with you: it doesn’t matter.
Okay, okay, I haven’t given up that much ground yet. I still believe that the meaning of life matters. But I don’t believe it matters whether God exists.
Now, I’m like many of you in that I value truth above most things. Ugly, loud, incomprehensible, or fruitless – we hunt down the truth in every form. We sniff it out and gobble it up faster than you can say “Lie.” But God is a dead end. Believers and non-believers can bicker about it for millennia (and they have). There just isn’t a universally accepted truth about God’s existence. We truth-eaters generally don’t like intellectual dead ends. But I’d like to suggest that God can be a very cozy dead end to get stuck in. So cozy, in fact, that it doesn’t really matter whether he exists.
Dan Dennett is a pretty cool philosopher. He’s got a big white beard and looks like Santa Clause. One of the things he’s discussed is religion as an adaptive evolutionary mechanism. He suggests that religion has been as essential to human life as our fingers. It doesn’t mean that if you’re an atheist you’re going to fall over dead. It does mean that evolution has given the upper hand to religious people. (Nowadays the countries with the highest rates of atheism have the lowest birth rates. It’ll be interesting to see how those countries hold out.)
So why is religion such an enduring and central part of civilization? An atheist’s response is that it provides people with a sense of connection to the world, a sense of purpose, and a sense of community. But why are any of those things important from an evolutionary point of view? Community, okay. We survive better in groups given the many physical limitations that come with being human. But connection and purpose? How can that benefit survival?
There’s a bunch of philosophers who’ve discussed how various psychological tendencies have evolutionary benefits. But I think that to really appreciate the necessity of religion, you have to be religious. Muslims and Christians make similar claims that the faithful must submit to God. From an atheist’s point of view, this is an absurd thing to do. Submit to what? The sky? A book? How can that possibly be helpful? But the psychology of it is amazing. There is something deeply satisfying about throwing your entire energy into one concept. I think it’s why people so desperately search for love, or obsess over their careers, or adore their children. We love to find something we think is perfect, better than us, worthy of all our dedication.
So, God is essential because believing in him makes us feel good. And humans who feel good survive, for many reasons. People who feel good are usually healthy. People who feel good aren’t homicidal or suicidal. People who feel good tend to help others out. People who feel good want to have sex. People who feel good are energetic, so they can last longer hunting boars or picking berries or whatever. So if you want to survive, feel good!
Going back a step, it’s worthwhile to wonder why it makes us feel good to dedicate ourselves to things we think are better than us. It’s also worthwhile to wonder why careers and lovers alone don’t make the cut. What is it about metaphysical things that makes us feel good? I have no idea. Which saddens me, because those are the most interesting questions. But it doesn’t matter. Believing in God makes us happy, industrious, fertile, healthy, and helpful. If your career does that, then great. If your lover does that, even better. Whatever floats your boat. (As in, Noah’s boat, get it?)
Dennett finds plenty of problems in the details. The way religion is taught, the way faith is preached, and the way customs are spread have led many people to question how good religion really is for the human race. But there are always problems in the details. No matter how much you love your job, some days suck. No matter how much you love your lover, sometimes he/she … uh, isn’t cool. (I’m tactful eh? Get it?) Likewise, no matter how good it feels to be spiritual, it can come with downsides. Like the crusades. But okay. The point is that maybe we should stop stigmatizing believers, workaholics, and romantics. In the end they all have the same ideals in mind – something bright, shiny, and better than us, guiding our behavior. For better or worse, having such ideals make us human. And hey, evolution seems to know what it’s doing, so we might as well embrace our humanity and try to survive a few millennia more.
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