Looking For Hope In A Hopeless World, Part 1 (of 3)

 

As we move through life we have to operate day by day with a certain number of assumptions that we perhaps just take for granted. They are unchallenged, perhaps even unexplained assumptions, but they reside in the recesses of our minds, molding and compelling us on our path of choice and consequence. These assumptions, taken as a collective, formulate our worldview, which in turn determines our opinions and outlook on life in the social, logical and existential spheres.

None of these spheres exist in a vacuum; they frequently overlap and form the basis of how we make judgments and decisions. Since the existential tends to undergird our social and (moreover) logical spheres, it is there we turn to determine the integrity of a worldview in light of what reality demonstrates. Existential beliefs reflect what we think about existence, including but not limited to our own individual existence. In short the narrative can be posited in two questions:

 

#1 Why does anything exist? Or worded differently: Where does everything come from?

 

#2 Why do I exist? Or worded differently: What is my place in the grand scheme of existence?

 

Some think very little about these things. Others spend their entire lives given over to pondering them. Philosophy found its genesis in ancient times when mankind strove to reason a purpose for existence collectively and individually. Boiled down to an extreme there are two opposing viewpoints that immediately come to the fore.

 

#1 Naturalism, which states that all existence, matter and life came from nothing, improved by chance and time (and mutation in some cases) and ultimately occurred incidentally or accidentally. Outside of the physical, material universe there is nothing. Human intellect is sometimes seen as the guiding light, the lens through which the natural world may be explained in terms of eons of time irking out fitful progress. From stars to planets, and from cells to societies, what our senses perceive is all that is. And all that is, biological, sociological or cosmological, is prone to mutate in time to come as it has in times past: without purpose or warning, blindly changing, ad infinitum.

 

#2 Supernaturalism, which states that all existence, matter and life came from an intelligent, directed First Cause. Polytheism, pantheism and dualism will not be considered under this heading, since by default they are inextricably bound to creation and in certain instances are expressions OF the creation, making matter and maker indivisible. It becomes a confusing and unsolvable riddle of the chicken and the egg. Objective supernatural revelation, given in relational terms to society is considered the guiding light or lens through which the natural world may be explained as being purposely created and superintended by an intelligence outside of our space/time existence. And all that is, biological, sociological or cosmological is not necessarily prone to large change on what would be considered a vertical scale of increasing complexity. Rather, existence would assume a static state with “horizontal” change biologically and sociologically as generations of humanity come and go and determine individually to either receive or reject external revelation given by the First Cause.

 

Having laid down a little ground work as I sort out terminology, let’s return once more to the meta-narrative of worldview #1: naturalism.

 

Naturalism is hardly a new view. Ancient religions believed that the primordial forces of nature brought forth the earth, not to mention their various pantheons of gods. Such a worldview makes deities subject to the natural forces that spawned them and therefore falls into something of a sub-category we might label “religious naturalism.” Pantheism in its purest sense does not escape this label, either. Since the First Cause in these instances tends to become an unknowable “force” rather than an intimate “person.” Nature and deity mingle into an abstract that cannot be separated. Modern naturalism tends to espouse atheism as a partner. This can be seen as a very normal pairing, since the naturalist by rights does not believe in anything above or beyond the natural order. The summit of existence could be defined in the beauty of human achievement, through science, the arts, or philosophy. Individual human determination also tends to be the measuring rod the naturalist employs when shaping right or wrong, since these abstracts become entirely subjective when robbed of an external reference point. Another common perspective is that mankind, though a reasoning being, is not so unique in the universal scheme, which is an oxymoron since the universe operates only by blind chance over time and has no scheme, or thoughts for that matter. Agnosticism may creep in as people consider the idea of a being beyond human understanding nebulously posited “out there” and sometimes referenced as “god.” But this deity tends to be defined as an unknowable and/or uncaring entity detached from the universe. He/she/it might be “out there” but no person can be reasonably assured of that. And were you assured somehow such knowledge wouldn’t matter because that being’s interest in our existence is nil.

 

What is the existential take away from naturalism? Despite the claims from numerous atheist writers that humanity holds no privileged place in the eschatological scheme of existence (because as stated before, there is no scheme) such writers demonstrate an articulation and abstract understanding that belies their arguments designed to liken us to animals. Many concepts hold no physical counterpart or reference point (love, beauty, etc) but they are meaningful in our discussions of them. Objectively, we understand these arguments as though meaning has already been posited in the words: words that convey a significance transcending the material world we populate. There is also a fatal link in the foundation of naturalism’s chain of reference to causation. Lacking a First Cause, the theory is left with one of two plausible choices (from that viewpoint). Either some unique phenomenon, unknown, untestable, and unrepeatable, suddenly created the space/matter/time universe and peopled it with energy to fuel its operations, or, the universe is eternal. The latter theory could be considered an extreme view of uniformitarianism. One might say that naturalism’s religion is evolution, or more specifically Darwinian Evolution in one of its accepted forms.