Live a good life. If there are Gods and they are just, then They will not care about how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you lived by. If there are Gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship Them. If there are no Gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.It s a very neat and tidy philosophy. It does not claim or deny the existence of deities. It simply removes them as the motivating force for being a decent human. Nearly every organized religion has some framework of acceptable and holy behavior that adherents attempt to emulate. For the most part, religions tell us not to victimize others. That's not really a bad plan or even difficult to follow.
The Judeo-Christian tradition often talks about invoking God's wrath. This ranges from heavenly fireballs to floods to bears eating children. The Lord, your God, is a jealous God. Fearing Him is a sure way to make sure we don't misstep and anger him.
The world is currently struggling with the idea that God is a discrete entity. The religious insist that He is, even though there is no scientifically qualified evidence to the fact. Atheists believe that He is not, but have no evidence either. The atheist movement is growing, and will likely continue to grow as knowledge becomes more easily disseminated by the internet. The biggest detriment to the creationist slant is that scientists are continually proving the biblical narrative to be largely inaccurate. Given enough time and learning, God will lose.
God will lose because we regard Him contextually. He, to us, is a conscious being. He knows all. He sees all. He had a plan for everyone and everything. We have our own consciousness and agency. God, therefore, must as well. That is all we can grasp.
Science is pretty uniformly on board with the Big Bang Theory. The Red Shift is clear cut evidence of an expanding universe. A universe in the process of expansion is bigger now than when I began writing this sentence. That said, go far enough back into history and it is a foregone conclusion that the universe was very small indeed. It may be correct to say that all matter was condensed into an infinitely small space, otherwise called a singularity.
That singularity, as mentioned, contained every atom of every galaxy. You, me, the people on the highway this morning commuting to work, this computer on which I type, and the electricity running it once occupied the same space. In that state, time had no meaning. Time and space are two axes of the same plane. One does not exist without the other. Thus, the singularity of all that the universe would become existed without time or dimension. It was both infinite and without form at the same time.
Within that singularity was also contained every possibility, every conscious being (or soul, if you wish) that could ever exist, and all knowledge that could be accumulated. Every thought that could be had, choice that could be made was first part of the singularity. And of that limitless potential and understanding, we were scattered into the existence we know now, to take what form we would. The singularity had been the giver of life, the bringer of death, and omnipotent over all that could exist.
What if... just what if the singularity was God.
While the narrative that we've become familiar with through religious tradition typically includes conscious and deliberate design, it can neither be proved nor disproved that the singularity possessed thought. The narrative may only have been a fabrication to explain existence to ourselves, but it is not in conflict with this possibility.
It also allows for atheism. Presupposing that there is sentient life elsewhere in the universe, it could easily be surmised that they are not Christians. Neither are they any of the other 4,200 other religions in the world, if they are religious at all. The singularity ceased to be when it gave birth to all that we know now. It could not bring us into being without destroying itself. The Alpha and the Omega are no more.
It's an intriguing thought. At least it is to me...
The leap isn't even a difficult one to make. Creation myths usually include one all powerful, or all encompassing deity. The singularity fits that role as being all powerful (containing all the energy in the universe) and all knowing (aforementioned aggregate of all information). The all powerful was simply the most powerful creative force. None of the singularity's offspring will ever be as powerful as it was. And only as the singularity could the repository for all knowledge be in one place; a feat which the offspring can never achieve.
As corporeal entities, we are blessed with inherent limitations. We ourselves are a conglomeration of energy, information, and mass that was once part of the singularity. There is nothing greater than the singularity to which we can aspire. Doesn't that meet the definition of "God"?
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