Benevolent God vs. Hostile Reality
Although I claim not to believe in anything, maintaining my position as a skeptic in all matters, there are things that I feel must, or at least should by virtue of some universal ethic, be true. These things I argue for vehemently, even at times contradicting my claims of open-mindedness and absolute skepticism. But as I sit here today, I am considering the possibility that all the ideas I hold dear, all principles I consider consistent with any sort of divine or cosmic justice, are completely false. And so I am also forced to accept the possibility that the universe – and by proxy this world – is unequivocally hostile. The only reason that I am able to engage in any ideological fight for my ideals is due to some quasi-belief that there is some benevolent undercurrent to the universe and its processes.
I am not so quick to call this undercurrent “God” or anything of the sort, but it seems it would require a willful and intelligent intervention to countermand the natural cruelty of the universe. And in the absence of a belief in such a being (but also the absence of a disbelief), I have to consider that perhaps all things will not “work out in the end”. If, for example, the ideologies that facilitate (even if only indirectly) racism, subjugation, genocide, slavery, socioeconomic disparity, world poverty, and other such global ills, are more representative of reality than the counter-arguments for a better world, then what else can I think but that there truly is no cosmic justice or benevolent undercurrent, and that the universe is hostile to my interests and in opposition to my ideals?
And how am I to stomach this, or to reconcile the idea with any hope for the future? Religious ideologues placate this sort of anxiety with a belief in the afterlife, going as far as to accept the evil of the material world as inconsequential. But what are the rest of us to do?