The Reason for God

A few years ago, when I was working to figure out my views on faith, religion, and God, I heard about Pastafarianism. This is a gag dreamed up by atheists who wanted to thumb their noses at the notion of God. Their deity was the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the most ridiculous mascot the atheists could come up with.

The problem with this is that all they really did was rename God. Buddha, Ala, Yahweh--a god by any other name still serves the same purpose. The details change, the appearance of His earthly presence reflects the cultures He inhabits, but in all cases God, through the prism of religion, provides some really important things, especially for primitive cultures.

The basics for any religion must address three things:

1.       Structure

2.       Consequences

3.       Understanding

Structure (laws, rules)

Is it okay to murder someone? Rape another man’s wife? Steal? All religions offer guidance on these issues, which we now think of as moral issues. But thousands of years ago, there was no central and agreed-upon set of morals. Before civilization, murder, indiscriminate sex, and theft were called survival skills. Religion came along and said, “Look, if we’re going to live together, we’re going to need everyone to live by some basic rules.” I imagine that lots of people said, “Says who?” What better authority than an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing (but invisible) God.

Consequences (justice)

So what if you break some of these nifty new rules that were designed to keep the peace? Law enforcement wasn’t exactly a refined science then, and most people got away with just about anything. Unless you were caught standing over a body, with the bloody knife in your hands, there really wasn’t any way to prove you did anything. So most people were above man’s law.

But what if the invisible man who knew and saw everything, and had infinite powers, was going to get back at you after you died? Death was no longer an escape, but a time when all of your bad deeds would be tallied up and you were charged accordingly. Might you behave differently then?

Just when you thought a life filled with misery, pain, and struggle was coming to an end, you were going to be punished in ways you could never have imagined. God provided a sense of justice to societies completely unable to provide it on their own.

Reason and understanding for the incomprehensible

This is familiar territory for me, so I don’t want to spend much more time on it, but we, as a race, have an innate need to understand things. What causes volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tornados? Thousands of years ago the knowledge about such things was so far out of reach that there was really nowhere to put questions about it but the God Bucket. Things in the Bucket, religion tells us, are things we needn’t worry about and needn’t understand. Well, that’s a relief.

I guess my point is that there’s a reason so many religions are so similar: they all fulfilled the same purpose. They provided things necessary for a society to exist and for people to coexist by implanting the idea that there were unseen and powerful forces at work and that He knows when you’ve been sleeping, He knows when you’re awake, and He knows when you’ve been bad or good.

So be good, for goodness sake.