Bowing to an Empty Throne

For this entry, I’d like to take a step back from anything specific about religious beliefs or religious organizations and look at  the wider subject.

If you are a believer, I’d ask you consider, just for a moment, that God suddenly disappeared. Maybe God was here before, but no more. Suddenly and instantly this universe is godless. What might change?

Would some truly evil people use deceit in order to gain wealth? Would some truly good people be deceived because of their charity and empathy and finish their lives destitute and begging?

Regardless of their religion and the prayers said or not said on their behalf, would some people suddenly find their cancer in remission? Would others, regardless of their religion and the prayers said or not said on their behalf, die in pain from the same cancers?

Would natural disasters strike seeming random locations – killing believers and non-believers alike, completely indifferent to individual faith?

Could gravity still hold Earth in its orbit for the next several million years? Would the sun rise each morning? Set each night? The moon continue to pull up the tides on a predictable and regular schedule?

How might you act differently? Would you know right from wrong without spiritual guidance? Would evil have control over your actions? Convince you to lie? Cheat? And steal?

On the other hand, if there suddenly was a God, I would expect a great deal to change. I’d expect that everyone who faithfully belonged to God’s chosen sect would never get sick. They’d never be cheated for being charitable. They’d never go cold or hungry. If, for some reason, a faithful servant did get cancer, or diabetes, or other chronic disease, prayers and blessings should ALWAYS work – otherwise, what is their purpose? Prayer would always work, thereby saving the rest of the congregation from having to uncomfortably rationalize away the many documented failures.

When I look out upon the cosmos, the universe seemingly behaves as I have described its godless version; chaotic and indifferent. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. Good things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. We sometimes get what our hearts most desire, and more often we don’t. The physical laws of the universe act as indifferently as one might expect them to do. Hurricanes flood Christian homes. Earthquakes bury Buddhists. Tsunamis drown Hindus. Disease kills the young, the old, the innocent, and the evil alike. In short, the universe works almost precisely as if God isn’t there. Maybe He isn’t. Maybe He never was.

As famed French scientist Laplace once sternly quipped when asked why he hadn’t mentioned God in his lengthy description of solar system mechanics, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”

Neither do I. I’ll find my awe in the stunning, glorious, and unsympathetic chaos.