Those cracks in the wall are really crack in my glasses. So I take off the specs and withdraw into my infantile blur.
What do I believe?
Discerning the improbability of creation, I believe in God.
If God is truth, what are the falsehoods that obscure Him from man's view?
Man's separation of himself from others is the seed of apathy.
Mortality, the heart of his suffering and impotence, is a pain that ushers man towards the selfish ethic.
Competition, from the perspective of a separate mortal, is man's torch for a cold world. Death to life in exchange for man's security and development.
Randomness, the Great Riddle for modern man, is the clearest sign of man's helpless uncertainty and God's callousness or impotence.
A self-centered mortal competes for life in a world of cold uncertainty, where he fears his own unimportance.
What haughty consolation has desperation brought man for these horrible visions?
MAN HAS FREE WILL IN THE SENSE THAT HIS WILL IS DIFFERENT FROM GOD'S WILL. MAN CAN FEEL PRIDE FOR HIS CREATIONS, HE CAN FEEL GUILT FOR HIS TRANSGRESSIONS, AND HE CAN FEEL WRATH TOWARDS OTHERS WITH FREE WILL.
MAN'S ABILITY TO CONTROL CAN TAME THIS WILD WORLD. MAN CAN LIVE FREE FROM THE TERROR OF UNCERTAINTY.
MAN IS SUPERIOR TO ALL OTHER ORGANISMS. THE GREAT UTILITARIAN WAR ON LIFE IS JUSTIFIED.
MAN CAN ACHIEVE AN IDEAL LIFE IF HE WORKS HARD ENOUGH. MAN'S STRUGGLING IS JUSTIFIED.
MAN IS A GOD; AUTONOMOUS, POWERFUL, SUPERIOR, WITH THE POTENTIAL FOR PERFECTION. BORN IS THE NEW DESTROYER.
If these be illusions, what other worldview can better account for man's circumstance?
What if God is truly omnipotent, and everything in the universe comes to pass according to God's will? Even sentient beings are prisoners of time's arrow, products of the past?
Randomness and free will are vestigial illusions to be discarded with the notion of a partially potent God. Man's existence is a story he observes in complete impotence. Man ultimately has no autonomous control over anything. God is the only creator, beside all his creations at every moment, spinning out time. There is nothing to fear. God's wisdom can be certainly trusted to produce every moment of existence, including everything we are, everything we do and all that comes to pass. In fact, with no random element, creation cannot be distinguished from God. Thus we discard the belief in man's separation from and superiority to other life, and embrace our intimate interconnectedness. To destroy other life is in fact self-destructive. Competition loses meaning, as it turns out all life is a grand cooperation in the telling of a story. So ends war, whose reputation of destructive power was but a mask for the humbling truth of man's powerlessness and God's ever present power. Here is our most intimate, most important relationship. Here is an affirmation of our special purpose.
To observe the evolution of complex adaptive systems we can gather that life is an education by a Great Teacher; an education man's narrow perspective can hardly comprehend. Judging from the rebirth in nature, we might imagine this learning to be pursued through many lifetimes, our spirits reincarnated to live through a few of the eyes of his creations. Cold mortality gone, we can now acknowledge our God to be a loving mentor. And so begin to embrace God's purpose for man as a benefactor to life.
Impotence realized, the reason for living is no longer to control the future, but to experience the moment. After all, the importance of a story is not in the end, but in the telling. Here we replace the God of design with a God whose great purpose is the new. Fountain of variety. New creation via evolution's constant change, with no ideal design in sight. The point of existence is no longer an impossible dream, but the possibility of new. No more frustrated lives.
Through this worldview of predestination life's coldest facts become acceptable. Ignorance, waste, suffering, and evil are all engines of change that place value on the new by sacrificing from the old. These are parts of God's plan, and not to be feared.
No longer helpless and alone, man can move from selfishness to compassion for all life. Instead of fear and selfishness, man is motivated by a student's excitement in the search for uncharted depths of living, and by love of God and his creations. He can enjoy this life in a world without pride or blame.
It seems man's illusions of godliness were portrayed to motivate man to development. Having achieved a degree of wisdom from his god-trip, man can be freed of these illusions. He moves from arrogance to humility, to finally leave the prison of the self. All that destruction of life in the wake of human history turns out to be a sacrifice for humanity's evolution. To be redeemed when man becomes a guardian of life.