Lost in the Cosmos: the Plight of Man in the Modern World

The famous atheist-scientist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion arguably would have almost certainly failed any philosophical course on Logic unless he had the wonderful luck of studying under a professor who is also elementary in his reasoning skills. I read his book. It is not convincing. It was an absolute riot from cover to cover. There is no scientific argument that contests the existence of God. There is no sound philosophical argument that makes the existence of God unlikely. He talks about how intelligent design theorists point to ‘seeming designs’ in the universe without qualifying how things can only seem to be designed without actually having been designed. Are computers only ‘seeming designs’ despite their complexity and obviously designed-construct? He even rants about how ‘irreducibly complex’ universe is and jumps to the conclusion because this is so a Creator would be infinitely more complex and thusly improbable. Does that even make sense? I don't think it does. He throws around scientific facts and theories using eloquent terms without qualifying how this negates the existence of God or how his idea of an ‘irreducibly complex’ universe that somehow (conveniently) just exists is superior to the idea of creation by God. He fails to show why belief in God is irrational and fails in his mission to show that belief in God is delusional. So why is there so much hype about the book? It is a book about God.

A three letter word, such a small word, brings to mind the question of the Divine Reality; it induces a complicated multi-tiered emotion of both love and hate. In the history of our species, people have fought, died, bled, sweat, loved, hoped, and found moral rebirth in the name of God. The prevailing question in the modern world is, why believe in God at all? It is quite fashionable to believe that all the findings of science, one and all, are completely adverse to and inconsistent with the propositions of any religious tradition. Any atheist asks himself, how could any rational human being believe in God? As an atheist-to-Catholic convert, I will admit, this was a mind-boggling question. I was baffled that some of the most intelligent people I knew were devout religious believers. But in my journey, I found more than an answer, I found a new question: how can any rational human being not believe in God?

Despite my near idolatrous worship of intellectualism—Lord have mercy—I am admittedly a closet-case romantic heart. In the spirit of romanticism, imagine gazing into the celestial sky, lost in the beauty and splendor of the heavens above. It fascinates us all. Internally, we all wonder, what more is there? Beyond the specks of light lies a mystery of how it all came to be. The simple gesture of staring into the night sky can raise the most profound questions for all who share in the human condition. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do things exist? Why is there life at all? Why is there evil and suffering? The scientific field of cosmology is essential to these questions, in it we study the universe as a whole—its structure, origin, and development. Our understanding of the universe is so fundamental to our everyday life. It shapes our worldview, our philosophy of life, our view of the human person, and thus our moral framework of life and behavior. The advances made in this field and of any human discipline are—or should be—oriented toward helping mankind attempt to answer the fundamental questions of human existence.

It is hardly surprising that many have come to expect modern science to answer all human questions to their satisfaction. This is not to say that science cannot provide us with incredible amounts of valuable information. The sciences offer knowledge that is properly secured by proofs, established methodically, and logically consistent. We know more now about the development of the world, of human life, the laws that govern nature and of the mystery of man himself and all that regulates our relationships with one another in this web of life on earth than our ancestors. It is profoundly perplexing to consider this reality. We have relieved ourselves from unbearable physical labor, eliminated the threat of many diseases with diagnosis and cures, and through this, we have raised the human life expectancy. In the past two hundred years, particularly, mankind has faced changed at unimaginable proportions. But with all of this change brought by science, we face new challenges. We face environmental destruction and the exploitive and dehumanizing effects of technology, to name a few. Progression is ambivalent—with development comes the potentiality of ruin.

The question of ruin and of, perhaps, changing or abolishing our human nature via technology—particularly with the growing transhumanism movement—begs the question of what it means to be human. Inevitably to question what it means to be human will lead to the question of God. In the modern world, there are countless religious and non-religious views to the question of God. In fact, the modern approach to religion involves this curious notion that every religion is of equal value and therefore, equally true. Logically, this is impossible as it goes against the intellectual principle of non-contradiction. Judaism and Christianity can’t simultaneously be true because Jesus of Nazareth would simultaneously be God and not God. All religions cannot simultaneously be true, which implies that either they are all wrong or one has supremacy over the others by the merits of being completely true. Surely, two plus two equates only four, not five, six, and seven as well. Truth by its very nature entails one answer. The answer in itself may contain many parts and be rather complex. However, if you were to remove any part of the answer it would no longer be a true, full, and authentic answer.

Arguably, there are certain truths that all religions possess. I am speaking mostly of major world religions. Most eastern world religions—Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, etc—are in fact life-philosophies that were established as religions arguably for political reasons and even Hinduism itself comes across as a philosophy of life at first glance before taking into account the pantheon of gods that manifest the one Divine Reality and belief in reincarnation. A certain truth that appears all across the world is that we cannot reach the “divine realm” and be before the Divine Reality imperfectly. According to Christian revelation, we may reject this entire possibility or attain Heaven, but not without a process of purification. In Hinduism, a person must go through multiple cycles of life in order to attain communion with this Divine Reality whatever this Being may be. The understanding is similar, not the same certainly and the application is different. But both understand a common religious truth, if you will.

The world's religions may all equally hold certain truths that are fundamental, but only one logically may contain “the fullness of truth” in the words of St. Paul, if any of them are true at all. Certainly most religions embrace a God and a detailed moral code, but when you began to get definitive and specific, the religions of the world began to diverge greatly even within themselves. The differences may seem small at first glance, but they are often profound differences that cannot be said to be childish theological disputes. But, the truth of the matter remains, either every religion is wrong to some degree if not entirely or one of them is completely right. Rationally, there is no other possibility. The accounts of human origin recorded in religious scriptures most certainly are not naïve fairytales or stolen, integrated work of a foreign culture. Each is a unique understanding of creation and the human person in light of that understanding. Genesis, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, represents the fruit of ageless meditations of believing people and the thought of inspired authors sure of their faith. The writing may be considered primitive, but when properly interpreted in historical context and in the light of its theological tradition, Genesis is an exceptional understanding of God, humanity, creation, and the “sin condition.”

Man has a unique situation in the natural order. The cosmos is a mystery. But what is even more mysterious to man is himself. What it means to be human is not given with being human. Man is an embodied spirit—matter that is aware of itself. This is simply mind-blowing. Man is literally thrown into existence faced with this ineffable reality, faced with suffering and decay, and faced with the ominous mystery of death. In ancient and medieval times, not perfectly so and not with the same advanced knowledge, this human reality was the focus of human thought. Philosophy dominated in education. In the modern world, this isn’t the case at all. It seems that every morning we rise to carry on as though we are immortal and nothing is ever going to change. We endure human existence feeling bored, fed up, or at best, blasé. We cannot see what we have: the gift of life. It is heartbreaking that we never notice how much we take for granted…until it's denied us. Often enough, we then become angry with God. There are times that our minds do not have enough to occupy it—when we're at leisure, the vulnerable moments before we fall asleep, long car rides, in quiet places—and it is only then we realize that souls walk within us, restless spirits that can perceive the silence and begin their roaming…drawing forth all the questions of life that we try so hard to ignore because no one wants to see their own sins laid out before them.

The world today is riddled with distractions from the fundamental questions of life—television, music, nightclubs, gambling, videogames, et cetera. The fashion industry, for example, makes millions on selling images and identities because in a world without God, without a clear sight of what it means to be human. We need an identity. We need something to feel the void of emptiness. But it seems even the teens in our society who aren't satisfied with the 'norm' and must be 'different' may go out and find a proper 'different' identity at, say, Hot Topic instead of at Abercrombie and Fitch entirely unaware that the two, Hot Topic and Abercrombie and Fitch, have the same owner. But the cool look and identity of today isn't the same as it was ten years ago, five years ago, and in some ways, it is not even the same as one year ago. The marketing industry must subtly dissatisfy their customers so that they can continue to sell and collect profits; they must continue to sell identities that are temporary because more money is to be made.

We accept whatever science tells us. We accept the status quo. We don’t open ourselves to anything. We create tight little world-constructs and allow very little room for any new information and ideas. Never mind that every 3.6 seconds someone dies from starvation, 48,000,000 million unborn children are slaughtered worldwide in a single year, or that the United States uses somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of the world’s resources to ill-effect of third world countries and impoverished nations. We just change the channel, watch reality-TV and are caught up in someone else’s lives and not evaluating our own. It seems that everyone wants to stay busy and distracted from reality because when we're idle, we're bored in our feeble meaningless and unfathomable existence.

Why has the world become so bitter, cold, and selfish? Perhaps, it has always been this way. But with what we know, should we not be changing? “Progress!” We all proclaim. Yet, again, in must be in accord with our humanity. But what does it mean to be human? Philosophy can help us address this almost impossible question. Through the centuries, religion has also provided answers. These answers, contrary to what many will argue, are not solely in theory and speculation, but in life as a whole, in rites and practices, in prayers and songs, in stories, symbols, images, feasts, art, ministries, in communion, and in intellectual tradition. Religion is written into history. Religion calls man out of himself, to be a moral creature, to be selfless, and loving. Man often neglects this vocation and because this is so today, as in the past, there are those who question God and criticize religious practitioners. Today, many religious people have unquestionably lost their sense of God in the midst of the crisis of our age—God has been obscured in the secularity of everyday life—in culture, peer pressure, ideologies, politics, habits, experiences, and personal choice.

We live in a world where we don’t have time for anything especially God. In the past, the day ended at sunset, which made time for long evenings of conversation, communal time, reflection, or leisure. When people were sick they stayed in bed and rested until they were better. Now we have electricity and we can stay up all night writing term papers, reading, watching Youtube.com, playing videogames—totally isolated from everyone else and free not to think of our responsibilities. We take antibiotics immediately when sick, which we should to preserve our health, but in doing so, we also don’t take a day off, we don’t miss a day of work—we stay busy, busy, busy. The structure of American society makes it difficult to include God in your life, to ponder the most profound questions there is to ponder, and to really devote yourself to charitable causes in addition to a full work load.

All of our human challenges endlessly bring us back to the question of God. God is irrevocably intertwined with the questions that have driven us rational animals since we began to inscribe words on tablets of clay. Who am I? From, what, why, and for what purpose am I? Can I really believe anything? That is, can I trust? What should I believe, and whom may I believe and trust? It is such questions that follow man as his life flows along, day by day, week by week. Anyone could concur that man from his beginning is perpetually trying to master and understand the human condition. It is obscenely evident in the million questions a child will pose in the course of a single day. What is that? Why is that so? What is that for? And in trying to answer these questions, we all find that we don’t know as much as we thought or the things that seemed so overly self-evident before are now hidden. The question of life comes differently to each of us, but it takes the same impact on each individual. Despite sincere intellectual conviction, Richard Dawkins and other atheists, should see that the God they reject, perhaps, has more to do with our existence than just being a convenient explanation of things yet to understood. Ultimately, it is the search for our origin, our purpose, and our meaning that drives us. And in seeking an answer, we are forced to look to the beginning, and He who made us is waiting for us.

Words of Wisdom from the Holy Father:

"The world needs God. We need God. But what God? In the first reading, the prophet tells a people suffering oppression that: 'He will come with vengeance' (Isaiah 35:4). We can easily suppose how the people imagined that vengeance. But the prophet himself goes on to reveal what it really is: the healing goodness of God. The definitive explanation of the prophet's word is to be found in the one who died on the cross: in Jesus, the Son of God incarnate. His 'vengeance' is the cross: a 'no' to violence and a 'love to the end.' This is the God we need."

"We are not some casual or meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
- Pope Benedict XVI

Further Reading: God and Evolution by Avery Cardinal Dulles