The Divine Dilemma

Stripped down to its bare minimum, monotheistic religion is about one thing and one thing only. There is a single, supernatural deity, the Author and sustainer of the universe. The purpose of Man is to love “him” with all his might.

There are, of course, other requirements, but they are secondary to a complete and utter surrender to the power and sovereignty of the Almighty. Loving your neighbour is important strictly because God wishes it. Man must therefore trust in his Plan, a deeply laid scheme beyond the comprehension of time-bound, sense-bound human beings. All misery stems from our failure to harmonise our will with that of the divine. Accept into your heart the relevant saviour, follow the script, be redeemed and we all – including, presumably, God himself – share in the Happy Ending. Though plain enough, this salvific strategy is imbued with paradox.

Man is special, the privileged focus of creation. All he need do to fulfil his God-given purpose is to become “nothing”, to consider himself wholly determined, a vacuous means to an end. God gave us free will only to hand it back, no questions asked. The destination is What Matters, even though we can have no proper comprehension of what this entails. It could be eternal hell. Perhaps eternal nothingness. The religious person must have faith, fix their gaze upon the place from whence we have all fallen, and give up their humanity and ego for what John Calvin called the “hidden bridle of providence”. Recognition that we are absolutely useless, hopelessly corrupted sinners always in need of his grace, is how human beings come to confirm we are loved and of value to our Maker.

As Woody Allen’s character in Hannah And Her Sisters (1986) figured, this approach to life can feel a lot like “die now, pay later”. The secular interpretation sought to redress the demeaning, spontaneity-sapping effects of predestination by affirming the value of free will, treating people not as meat puppets but as ends in themselves. Instead of looking to the sky, we turned our attention to earthly considerations, to the voyage of discovery, rather than that “better place” promised by the votaries of God. Life is its own reward. And it has to be – our destiny lies exclusively within the physical universe. Through the enchanted powers of science and technology, the universe could now be bent to serve the will of Man.

The century following Descartes’ death saw a gradual but profound shift in influence from authority based on revelation, patriarchy and Man as a fated means – follow God, he knows what he is doing – to empirical facts, pluralism and personal emancipation. As pointed out by historian Will Durant, the decision to grow up and ditch the facile certitudes of religion for whatever dispassionate science and reason throws up, was a very brave one.

Copernicus had reduced the earth to a speck among melting clouds; Darwin reduced man to an animal fighting for his transient mastery of the globe. Man was no longer the son of God; he was the son of strife, and his wars made the fiercest brutes ashamed of their amateur cruelty. The human race was no longer the favored creation of a benevolent deity; it was a species of ape, which the fortunes of variation and selection had raised to a precarious dignity, and which in turn was destined to be surpassed and to disappear. Man was not immortal; he was condemned to death from the hour of his birth.

This worldview trend, what the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously called the Death of God, comes with many discomforting corollaries. We can no longer lay claim to be extraordinary, since there is no transcendent influence Out There, beyond the universe, capable of framing a picture bigger than the one conceived by Man. In a world ruled by chance and necessity, self-defining humans have no reason to conquer themselves. Why would you? We may watch The Mentalist, expect that Jane will solve his weekly mystery, but the Mystery of Red John is a ridiculous cop-out inculcated by those needing to appease their loneliness and fear of death by brainwashing other weak-minded souls. Likewise, the question of human suffering cannot be a feature of a meaningful existence, since it too is nonsensical. There is no-one Out There to have initiated it, nor a Larger Hope to appeal to for mercy. Toughen up. Spare yourself the terrific nonsense. There is no realm apart from this and What Matters can be understood by the mind and known through the senses, the wondrous physical things we observe, hear, taste, touch and smell.

While a bold and commendable move, these logical ramifications offend our experience of reality and, in some cases, reason itself.

Human beings are worshipping animals on a spiritual pilgrimage. Most, if we’re honest and can put aside the spectre of religious indoctrination, can at least acknowledge the idea of a sacred dominion beyond this reality and the possibility of celestial intervention, something that might be instinctively referred to as karma, mother nature, luck or fate. Surely, it’s conceivable there are invisible forces holding things together with someone in charge, perhaps guiding History toward a mutual higher end? Who hasn’t had an encounter with the uncanny, felt at times affected by a muse or unwittingly concluded that everything “happens for a reason”? We feel an inexplicable exhilaration when our decisions and actions click into place, as if in sync with a cue from beyond the cosmos. Happiness is about fitting into a life that is “going places”. Conversely, we’re left distressed or angry if things don’t “go to plan” or we struggle to determine what to do next, believing it important it be the “right” move.

In the 60s, Jim Morrison screamed and hollered about his need to “break on through to the other side”. Where did he think he was going? Every year, millions of university and high school graduates around the world sing along to Green Day’s Good Riddance (Time of Your Life): “Time grabs you by the wrist/Directs you where to go”. Who do they, and Billie Joe Armstrong for that matter, believe is doing the grabbing and directing?

I rather like Liam Gallagher’s shrewd take on spirituality. In an interview with The Times, the former front man for British band Oasis told reporter Michael Odell that he now contemplates God most Sundays. “I’m not turning into fucking Bono,” the badboy was quick to add. “It’s private. But I’m connected, man. To something.”

As sentient, goal-orientated creatures, we instinctively look up, inspired by the starry heavens, suspicious that perhaps the human heart is connected to something far beyond our cognitive understanding. Earthly glory and the quality of our material circumstances, while momentarily gratifying and necessary for happiness, are never sufficient. We esteem “timeless” or “eternal” values. All human beings – the President of the United States, my brother, the bloke in Iraq, Christopher Hitchens a couples of weeks before his death – bear a cross, each of us striving to redeem a deep mythical wound, an exquisite despair that somehow inspires us to carry on. Darwin’s compelling theory cannot vanquish the feeling we’re exceptional.

Many claim On the Origin of Species contradicts the notion of a designing God. Look, nature is red in tooth and claw, ruthless and blind, always favouring the smart and strong over the poor and meek so adored by Jesus. For atheists, evidence of natural selection thoroughly discredits the possibility of a guiding hand from beyond. While a reasonable conclusion, this arrogantly assumes it’s possible for Man to discern such influence in the first place. Such presumptive thinking was what ensnared Job. The apparent randomness of biological evolution is only a difficulty for a monotheist who expects to solve Life, the Universe and Everything. A bona fides religious mind, one truly accepting of radical scepticism, would revere Darwin’s conclusions as the best “proof” possible of God’s inscrutable Plan. To feeble reason, the marvel of existence should appear to be arbitrary, without rhyme or reason.

Similarly, the theory of evolution does not dispense with Western culture’s much worshiped anthropocentricism. Our uniqueness is immutable, not something that can be explained away. The ability of Man to posit that he is not the centre of the universe is, of itself, an exceptional achievement. We’re distinctly special in being able to formulate the unbelievable idea that we are inconsequential. The words from Durrant are something of a blow to our ego. But like Descartes and his demon, this experience only serves to confirm something of significance. Arguing there is no Red John doesn’t obviate the feeling that humanity is being slowed walked to a profound epiphany.

In addition to despising Christian morality for discouraging those instincts that ennoble us, Nietzsche lashed the educated rabble of late-nineteenth century Western European society for its bourgeois unwillingness to suitably prepare for the decline of religion. The French revolutionary Denis Diderot once quipped that Man would only be free once the last king had been strangled with the entrails of the last priest. While thrilling iconoclasm and an effective call to arms, such hatred does not amount to a practical set of principles for building a new civil society. Disinterested thought is a splendid social adventure, but where’s the road-map for shared success, something more structured and sustainable than guillotining heretics. “I teach you the Superman,” announces the protagonist to the villager bystanders in Thus Spoke Zarathrustra. “Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”

Fifteen years after storming the Bastille, Napoleon was appointed supreme ruler of France, bringing the first Republic’s flirtation with democracy to a bloody close. A few questions help to highlight why. How does a secular society justify moral improvement if all its members are absolute ends? Is egoism a danger when the will of Man is bound to no rational measure other than itself? Having killed off a domineering God and divorced consoling Christian delusions from everyday life, how are we to combat the infinite meaninglessness untethered by Copernicus, Newton, Darwin and their like? If Man is merely the product of fortuitous random forces, what then of the unifying ideals of Western democracy, the proposed vehicle for an enduring global kinship? Liberation for what reason, exactly?

The second act of Western civilisation instigated some serious though largely unidentified trade-offs. In a godless world, there is no numinous quality for Gallagher to connect to or form part of. Only the things and concepts familiar to our minds, what is recognisable and can be controlled within The Matrix, is fair game. The rejection of spiritual transcendence is the quid pro quo for thinking and acting freely. Nihilism is the price of dignity and self-determination. Which is fine, except that what “is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end”, says Zarathrustra. No teleology equals no progressive urge nourishing the soul. No reason to confront the great burden and opportunity of discovering “this is what I am here to do”. Hence the internal malaise and desire to fill our empty, scripted lives with the external validation of materialism. Hence the humdrum and disconnectedness, our rift from What Matters. The realisations of Nietzsche’s wailing madman come all too late.

No! Come back,

With all your torments!

Oh come back

To the last of all solitaries!

All the streams of my tears

Run their course to you!

And the last flame of my heart –

It burns up to you!

Oh come back,

My unknown God. My pain! My last – happiness!

The modern era cast off much dead-weight and opened our eyes to many new and important things. It also assumed radical liabilities. Highlighting the nature of the bargain implicit in The Enlightenment, in the hope that a best-of-both-worlds model between religion and secularism can be forged before the conflict brings about our apocalyptic demise, is problematic.

Though itself incomplete, there is no plausible successor to what we have now. No-one knows, still after all this time, what comes next. It is unclear what Act III looks like, how it might function in terms of politics, social structures and intermediary institutions. What are the post-secular, post-partisan rules of engagement between government and the people? Are elected representatives needed or can we all be virtuous anarchists, allowing me to cross the street when I choose, free of harassment? Is the final step an evolution or a violent revolution capable of destroying all that’s been achieved thus far? And, of course, the epic, unseemly consideration that always looms large. Is it realistic to tear down the wall of separation between state and church, the great firewall responsible for nurturing the power and glory of the American state? Is there a political structure capable of finally synthesising secular life with all matters divine?

Increasingly anxious liberal democracies, without a higher purpose and unclear on how to respond, cannot admit to being trapped in The Matrix even though their citizens sense, like Neo, that things aren’t quite right with the world. We, clever fools that we are, would rather lie about the hypocrisies and failings of secularism than risk returning to the bad old days.

As the British Government has found with its Big Society initiative, any push to re-establish “traditional values” is easily frustrated. Though the left or progressive side of politics is without a solution to social decline, it can easily use cherry-picked democratic values to mobilise a distrustful community. Conservative political figures entering the public sphere bemoaning moral standards must contend with a certain quirk of fate. To declare society’s stasis the result of an unhealthy reliance on the state makes it extremely difficult to then argue for the implementation of government-backed reforms. Though themselves addicted to state intervention, including moral action against perceived haters, racists and homophobes, secular acolytes, in syndicate with the liberal media, are more than ready to campaign for personal responsibility on selected issues. That is, it’s fine for society to tell racehorse owners and Chick-fil-A what to do, but it’s a violation of human rights to suggest subsidised contraception for single mothers, mandatory language courses for immigrants or work-for-welfare programs. This irony is vividly realised in those savvy, hoodie-wearing teenagers who disrespect society while availing themselves of all its entitlements.

UK Prime Minister: For too long, a big bossy bureaucratic state has drained away the sense of social responsibility that lies at the heart of every community. We must restore people’s faith that if someone hurts our society, if they break the rules in our society, then society will punish them for it. People are crying out for the government to act.

Youth: So, how you going to do that, Guvna? Won’t it take a bureaucracy, one even bigger than the one you have now? A copper on every corner. Or are you going to solve that by allowing the police to exercise their prejudiced view on right and wrong, down on the street with his truncheon across my throat? On who’s authority are you going to judge my actions. God? I don’t believe he exists. Society? Aren’t I part of your Big Society?

UK Prime Minister: We’ve got to be less cynical and less sensitive to the charge that this is about interfering or nannying.

Youth: I’m not over-sensitive or cynical – merely pointing out the practicalities and hypocrisy. Didn’t you say the broken society that caused the London riots was partly due to a twisting and misrepresenting of human rights that has undermined personal responsibility? You’re mobilising because those Tory bastards that voted for you think it’s a human right that we should do what we’re told so they can feel all safe behind their pretty picket fences. Talk about a sense of entitlement.

It’s a gripping double-bind. The wounded Western ego is stuck but can’t fess up. Acknowledge something outside The Matrix, and risk re-exposing society to the charlatans and idolatries of metaphysical theism used for centuries to enslave humanity with superstition and arbitrary judgements. Or continue to recoil from the mysticism of Something Else, and condemn ourselves to a morbid scientific culture that presumes reality to be a closed system of material cause and effect, and the human experience reducible to facts and figures. Permit a mass return to the unassailable citadel of religious conviction or persist in denying we are beset by a make-believe version of life that worships the mind at the expense of the human spirit.