I am begging the question of Godless Children. What do I mean? Lets seeâŚWhen I look around, I see that believing in God has become out of fashion. People equate it to being superstitious, being old-fashioned, being un-scientific just to name a few. Many people would say âI believe in Godâ â some sort of âbeingâ out there who we can place our cosmological eventualities to, that somehow all answers can be cached to the existence of God.
The problem with our upbringing in this generation, post-2nd-world war, post 19th Century Enlightenment is we are ultimately brainwashed by residue ideas. Some of us might agree, some of us might totally disagree, but what used to be radical ideas such as Nietzche has become mainstream. In terms of human enlightenment, a society moving away from religious dependence is a sign of becoming more civilised. Examples such as banning of Burkha in France highlights the frowning we get when we bring religion into the public sphere. My friend said to me a few days ago, âyour generation is the generation of Godless Childrenâ [Paraphrased]. I pondered upon what he said, and I decided to type out something to try to prove or disprove his point.
Atheism is not a modern phenomenon. However, atheism as a mainstream religion is a modern phenomenon. This religion is called Hedonism: we human beings can and should derive the maximum satisfaction. Perhaps Hedonism has a negative connotation which is not totally called for. Whilst the generation before us care mostly about money, our generation care about satisfaction. I am aware that everything is relative (i.e. what I say or am about to say is not really applicable to Children in Africa who donât have basic education), and given my immediate surrounding in the developed westernised world, money as an incentive is good for survival but perhaps we derive satisfaction from creativity and sharing this result. Let me give you an example, people develop softwares so that we can enjoy free services online. We can talk to our friends in the other side of the world instantly, information propagate in an unprecendented speed. People are willing to give up their time and effort for free. Time becomes unproportionally prolonged. Think of receiving a letter in the 50s from a friend abroad, it might take 2 weeks to get a respond, today, if it takes longer than 2 hours we complain. I canât help but think because of this unproportional bending of psychological space-time coupled with enlightenment ideas, we are unable to see the reality of the world for what it is anymore. Today, I can log onto Google Streetview and see the street I grew up in in Hong Kong without standing up. Our distorted virtual world makes us believe we ourselves are gods who can create and destroy the world. Indeed, I love playing Simcity.
The opium of the masses is our LCD screens: the latest X-Factor news, the latest News from Afghanistan, the relationship status of our friends of facebook, the latest tweet of your friend living in Lima, not to mention the latest football score in the Premiership League. If Marx was right about one thing, it is that religion is the opium of the masses. The question is what do we worship? Movie stars? Founders of big tech companies such as Mark Zuckerberg and Shaun Parker not to mention Bill Gates? Money? You see, Karl Marx was referring to Christianity, whilst I have reservation about his whole theory, his observation in terms of religion as a form of addictive power is absolutely correct. When people believe in something so much, they are willing to kill for their âgodâ â look at the fans for Westham football club, you can see the truth in it. The radicals amongst us would look at this behaviour and project logically that it is stupid to believe so deeply into something that they are willing to give up their lives for it. Yet, everyday we donât fail to wake up at 8am to go to work, come home at 6pm because we know that on the 25th of each month, some digits will pop up on your LCD screen telling you that you are worth something in society and that because of your obedience to the system, you are rewarded with something called âpurchasing powerâ.
You might read this blog post and think â hey its such an anti-religion post. I guess. Donât fool ourselves, I am also a product of this western civilisation. I am from batch âclass of 2003âł who was created by our great education âsystemâ who then followed the system to go to university. I did everything I was told as a product of the industrial revolution. My grandmother used to work in a factory making clothes so that the westerners can go into a shop and pick up some random shirt without caring who made it.
I guess the question we need to ask ourselves are, beneath the surface of it all, the facade of our society, the ideas being propagated, what is the truth? Its all easy and nice to live in a bubble and believe that the bubble is all there is; Our accountability does not transcend our sensory and logic â that since we understand the mechanism in which things happen within this bubble we can deduce everything outside of it. There is only 1 thing which is certain in our life and that is death. In a world where we are constantly numbed from this fact (from video games, movies etc), we donât really seek beyond the surface, and this includes ideas. If we can strip away everything: our looks, our senses, our ideas, our emotions â what is left? If you truly believe there is nothing left, we are really living a very sad existence and I can honestly see why we must live an Hedonistic life.
Iâm sorry, I cannot perceive this world without âGodâ â not as a person, not as an entity, not as an idea â but just âGodâ. Afterall its a label for something one cannot conceive. We can use metaphysics to explain it, we can come up with philosophy for it, but its a concept which is beyond us. Perhaps as Descartes begged the question â is âexistenceâ an attribute, i.e. A triangle has 3 sides (which is an attribute) but does a triangle need to exist for it to be a triangle? So, perhaps the discussion of existence of God is meaningless because there is only one truth, whether as an idea or as an entity, God exists and no matter how you try to define Him His existence is already assumed.
We are Godless Children because we just donât want to think, or we donât know what to think.