Thursday, October 1, 2009

The God Delusion

Continuing on the theme of my previous blog, life is essentially unpredictable and unfair because of the huge role chance events play. Which is why most philosophies had a really tough time giving us a cogent explanation of our life and its meaning.

That’s where men stumbled upon the most convenient explanation, God. God filled in all the gaps of our knowledge. Any physical phenomenon that cannot be explained had to be God’s creation. The lack of justice and fairness in this life found neat explanations in afterlife, or reincarnation.

We have a difficult time living with the assertion that all life is on earth through blind chance and evolution. We had more difficulty with the fact that good people do not always get rewarded, or bad people punished. Which is why God is such a persuasive argument. God makes life better, because we cannot live life with so much unexplained.

Richard Dawkins, the celebrated author of ‘The Selfish Gene’, argues persuasively against the existence of God in his book, ‘The God Delusion’. Other than being a nice refresher on some of the scientific topics like natural selection and the origin of the universe – it also provides an alternative philosophy on why life does not have to be completely amoral because there is no God watching us, punishing or rewarding us in afterlife.

His argument is that if there is no God keeping order, the mankind has to take the responsibility in creating a fairer world. And man has indeed taken such enlightened steps. Move towards democracy, end of apartheid, a progressive tax structure are just a few examples of such attempts.

Of course, we may never hope to achieve the precise justice that God would have meted out in afterlife. Life here will always be somewhat unfair, buffeted by chance events. But man’s attempts, small and imprecise they may be, are real, tangible and immediate. God and afterlife are a copout.