What If

What if there were no humans, no belief in the infinite, no passion?   Would god exist?  Is belief in god, god’s existence?  Does god exist because someone believes, because someone prays?  Is god’s existence merely subjective faith?  What does the existence of humankind mean to god?

Or is there an objective god and if so what purpose does faith serve?  It seems to me that if there is an objective, all powerful god which created everything, such a god would have had to have been here before time began and surely it would also have to continue to be here once time ends.  An objective, all powerful god should know everything, all that has ever been and all that will ever be.  Or is the objective god limited, evolving, just a more advanced expression of humanity?  And in all that this objective god knows, are there multiple outcomes for my life?  If so, this could mean that there are more outcomes than can be imagined by my, or any other comparably puny human mind.  Or does the objective god only know the one outcome of each life.  Is the single fate of every tree, every dog, every grain of sand, known?  What if your prayers do not amend the outcome of your life?  And if there is an objective god why is faith even an issue?  Why wouldn’t an objective god make itself known and stop sectarian violence?

If there is only one outcome for each life, why pray?  If you pray, you believe in free will and the power of prayer to influence the future.  If there is only one outcome for each life, is prayer merely an avowal of faith to a subjective god?  And if prayer is merely an avowal of faith in a subjective god, doesn’t god already know whether or not you believe and nothing is gained by prayer?  I understand why it is written that praying to a false idle is condemned but I don’t understand why ‘not praying at all’ is also condemned.  Is it because if no one prays, believes, has faith, god ceases to exist?

What if humans, as the only fully rational and self-aware creatures on Earth, are a mistake, an aberration, a miscalculation, a screw up, a fluke, an evolutionary faux-pa, a squinch in a world created for some other purpose, a destructive byproduct, a side effect?  What if rational thought is just an implied space, a side effect of something useful that is in itself destructive and/or counterproductive, an experiment gone badly, if you will?  What if the real purpose of existence is the balance of all life on Earth?  And what if it can only be recovered once all humans are gone?

What if we cannot know if something is true?  How would we know that we do not know and even cannot know truth?  What if truth is more or maybe less than just congruence between what we think and what we experience?  If we can know truth, how would we know that we do know truth?  If facts are true, are there truths that are not facts, subjective truths?  What if it does not matter if we know truth?  What if it does not matter what we believe?  What if it does not matter what we have faith in?

It is one thing to believe in or have faith in something that you know to exist, like “I believe the sun will rise tomorrow”.  But having faith in the absurd; in that which you cannot know to be true, cannot experience, cannot prove, is quite another thing.

One of Ten

"There are perhaps ten people who have the patience to read what I have expounded above, and scarcely one man in the kingdom who would take the trouble to compose anything like it; which last, however, in one way consoles me, for if everybody can do it, if the work is mere routine, contract-writing by the sheet, then it becomes precisely my merit to have done what all can do (this is the humiliating feature of it for the weak human heart), but which no one else cares to do." Soren Kierkegaard CONCLUDING UNSCIENTIFIC POSTSCRIPT TO THE "PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS"

Faith in the Absurd is Comforting

Believing in an omniscient, ever present being makes life easier.  Belief; steadfast, ever-present belief in god, is a subjective and unchangeable focal point that calms.  This focal point does not vary.  It does not change. It is the constant that can always be counted on.  Without this focal point, life is precarious, unstable, out of control.  Without this subjective focal point there is much to fear.  All can be lost in an instant.  Everything of value, everyone you hold dear can be taken from you without recompense.  In an instant you can be abandoned, alone without subjective faith.