We are our own gods and purpose, but this realization may prove too much for us.
By: Tanner Campbell
Tags: Spirituality, Religion, Agnosticism, Atheism, Belief

Imagine that human beings are nothing more than the unlikely outcome of the events following The Big Bang. All the universe over, our unique brand of sentience exists only on Earth, and we are simply the uncommon outcome of a natural and ancient process.

What would that mean?

The most obvious answer would be that every construct we’ve ever manifested has had no true connection whatsoever to how we came to be — other than the fact those constructs were enabled to exist only as a result of our existing to form them. In this way, we are the gods of a great many things. We are the gods of morality, of religion, of ethics, of literature, of inspiration, of thought, of expression… of everything which is not a physical thread in the fabric of space itself.

Boulders? Electrons? Heat? We are not the gods of these, but we are the gods of all the words used to describe and name them. We have created everything which is an interpretation of raw material. Words from sound, buildings from stones, and thoughts from the ability to think. If gods are those who create our experience, then we are them; and if God is they who created all other gods, then God was an explosion of force and nothing more.

At first, this might feel empowering.

You come to a realization like this in phases, of course, it doesn’t just happen — and even if it did, it would take time for the ramifications of the realization to be fully understood.

At first you’re likely to feel empowered by it; think of the shibboleths you can now shake-off, the oppressive rules and traditions you can now opt-out of without the fear of divine retribution. However, in time that feeling should fade and leave you with an aching, but not yet entirely articulate concern. One you may have had answered before discovering the truth, but which now leaves you with no small amount of intellectually-hedonistic flexibility — not to mention anxiety.

“So what’s the point of my life?”

When there are gods, when there are shibboleths, when there are traditions, it is much easier for you to feel that you have an understanding of, or even a firm grasp on, the point. The point, before, was to uphold tradition, to make your parents proud, to fulfill your defined role and duty in society, to honor a god, et cetera.

But if you would like, still, to feel as though there was a point to your existence, must you not find something to replace these, now, primitive things? Certainly you cannot stand upon a razor’s edge at the void of meaninglessness, stare into endless darkness and say,

“I guess there’s no meaning or purpose after all. That’s okay. I can still live a good life and find motivation for doing so.”

Very few of us are wired for such unflinching resilience; to be told no one made us, that there’s no point, and that neither punishment nor reward await us at the end of this decades-long trial.

New gods, or recycled ones, then, must be conceived of. But at what cost to our grip on reality?

We still crave meaning, but we’ve come to understand how archaic and oppressive mainstream religious texts and practices are, so in defiance of it we resort to beliefs that are surely not more fantastical, but are absolutely more fluid and less defined.

Universal or Cosmic consciousness?

Paganism honoring the Norse All Father, Celtic Cernunnos, or Aztecan Quetzalcoatl?

Some loosely defined higher power of self with a little sprinkle of spirit guides and energy vibrations mixed in?

Each of these examples as fictitious and human-borne in nature as the last, and of the mainstream, but we see them as fresh escapes from the silliness of traditional beliefs. In the end, though, it’s the same; and ill-thinking begets iller-thinking.