CHAPTER 3 There is no god? We leaped inside the Chapter just as a giant explosion was occurring. Bo grabbed onto my pajamas as the intense force sent us hurtling through space. We floated around for a long, long time, and I yawned. "So, where are we, and what are we doing here? Nothing's happening, and I'm getting pretty bored." "Quite the contrary, my friend. A lot is happening. You've just witnessed the greatest event of the universe -- the Big Bang. Now look over there. See that tiny speck?" "That little flicker?" "That is the Sun. And around it is the Earth. Here, take a look." There was a telescope mounted on a post beside us. (How convenient!) Noticing a slot for a quarter, I went to check my pockets, but then I remembered I had my pajamas on. "There's some time left on it," Bo said, and I took a peek. Down on Earth, I saw molecules bouncing around, colliding and combining. Gases swirled and swooshed and water formed and flowed, and the molecules kept bouncing around until just the right combinations occurred, and tiny organisms grew in the water, and I kept watching, and a few million years later there were larger organisms, and I watched and a couple hundred million years later one of the organisms crawled out of the ocean, and I saw creatures live and die as the sun rose and set millions of more times, and eventually there was a caveman, and I kept watching as a human was born and people lived and laughed and cried, and I heard their voices and their words of hope and desperation, of longing and of fear, of joy and sadness. And civilizations rose and fell, and life went on and on and on and on... The quarter ran out and the telescope went blank. But it was just as well because my brain was overloaded with the weight of a billion, trillion lives. Bo pointed to other flickers in the sky. "There are other planets of life out there, too!" He was smiling. All around me I could hear voices echoing. I heard praises and pleas to gods and goddesses, and Gods who were one, and Gods who were all. And they reached out into the emptiness of space. "Is there no one to hear them?" I sighed. "If there is no God, then of course not," Bo shrugged. "But then it seems so pointless. There's no God to right all the suffering? No God to preserve the happiness? Life is just a random occurrence 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?'" I was devastated. Bo clicked his tongue. "If there is no God, then I guess you could say that. But I wouldn't see it that way." "But it can't be true. It would be too horrible. All the billions upon billions of lives, and it didn't mean anything. No, it just can't be." "Jack, that's not proof. Just because you don't like the possibility doesn't offer the slightest proof that it doesn't exist. You've got to prove it so we can leave this chapter behind us." "Well, let's see," I sighed, and my head started to hurt. "Well...the...universe...Um... Something had to have created the universe." "You saw it, the Big Bang." "But what was there before?" "Matter and energy. It's a neverending cycle of destruction and rebuilding. The universe came together and it's slowly falling apart -- it's called entropy -- and when it's all done tumbling down, it'll start all over again." "But what's outside the universe! It can't just keep going forever." "Scientists say it's folded over on itself, or something like that. Finite, but infinite at the same time. Whatever that's supposed to mean." "You've got to explain it better, Bo. I can't disprove it if I don't understand it!" "Sorry, can't help you. The experts got it all proved mathematically. Or at least they say they do. No one except them understands it, but everyone takes their word for it... SCIENCE, you know." I shook my head. "Hmmm....Well...Who set up all the laws of the universe, huh? Why does everything follow specific rules and..." "They just happen, Jack. Matter and energy just happen to have certain characteristics. Man just tries to box it up into neat little packages of laws and theories to try and understand it all." "Whatever. Well...Hey, but what about consciousness. I mean, I'm more than just a physical being. I'm more than just the thoughts that go on in my head. There's something deeper in me that watches it all go by. Like, there's the me that's here with you right now, floating around in this crazy Cosmic Book...while my physical body's home in bed, probably fast asleep...it's my consciousness that is here, even if this is only some weird dream...I think it's our consciousness that makes us alive. We all have it. All living creatures. Humans just have it a lot more advanced." "Hold on, Jack. You can't get too involved with consciousness right now. We've got to stick to the first question: Who is God? We can come back later if you'd like to explore this a little more. You might have something there with that consciousness angle. But then you might not. There's all kinds of scientific theories about consciousness..." "Such as..." "Well, some scientists insist that it's a form of energy that underlies physical existence. Some go so far to say that everything, even molecules are conscious, and that reality is subjective, and dependent on consciousness." "Sounds pretty metaphysical..." "Yup. But then you've got the more mainstream scientific explanation that consciousness is nothing more than the result of a certain degree of complexity of molecules. A culmination of electrochemical reactions resulting from the countless inter-connections of billions of neurons. But I'm sure we'll get into that later." "Yeah, later. I don't like this Chapter, Bo. I'd really like to get out of here now. It's getting me really depressed. How can atheists go on living each day thinking there's no reason or point to it all?" "For an atheist, there doesn't have to be an ultimate Plan and Purpose for the Universe in order to find purpose in one's life. There may not be a 'reason' for existence, but there is a glorious reason to live -- To LIVE." "But there's no plan. No justice. No chance for happily ever after." "An atheist is just using plain old reason to arrive at the only explanation that a person can find when you rationally look at the world. It is true that sometimes it's a lot easier to get through life believing that there's a plan and a purpose and someone out there that will make it all okay. Sometimes atheists envy those who can fall back on the crutch that religion often offers -- to an extent, of course. But they know that it can't rationally be, and they can't lie to themselves." "Reason doesn't always work, Bo. Sometimes you just have to have faith!" Bo laughed softly. "Religious Believers believe because of 'faith' -- that's believing in something that reason shows cannot be. An atheist believes in the way things are, not in what he wishes they'd be. So he makes the best of his life. And tries to be the best that he can, because this is all that there is. Think of how the world might be if everyone lived that way. If they made every moment count. It would probably be a much nicer place." I shook my head. "Maybe it would, but we need to believe there's something more than this life; we need to feel we're immortal. We know in our hearts that there are no happily ever afters here...the world is cruel and unjust all too often... We...I need to believe in something more because its the only way I can have faith that it'll all work out, and that all the wrongs will be righted and justice will prevail...it's my only hope for true happiness..." I stood defiantly, pouting with my hands folded over my chest, and noticed Chapter 3 floating by. It stopped and stood by us. Bo flipped to the end. The Probability Blank stared at me, but I turned away. "Suit yourself..." Bo sighed. "I personally think it's perfectly reasonable and acceptable... But it's just my opinion. I'm entitled to mine, just as you're entitled to yours. Besides, in some ways a godless universe is a more pleasant possibility." "How can it be more pleasant...If there is no God, then when it's over it's over!" "Well, the flip side to some part of you living on happily ever after, is that you can spend all of eternity burning in hell. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer nothingness. But then this is getting into another Question again. Look, just put 'Possible' for now; we'll come back to it later...I promise," Bo urged. "NO! I won't!" I insisted, and I tried to swim away from the Chapter. It just floated after me. "It can't be. It just can't!" I pouted. "I won't put that it's possible. I just won't!" Another million years of voices drifted up to my ears, and I only half listened to my rational brain as it pointed out that there might very well not be a god. And as I tried to envision what the world would be like if people truly valued life and made each moment count, I realized it really wasn't that bad a prospect at all. Bo was sleeping on the pencil and I stared at the Probability Blank. Still, my emotional side hated this Chapter and refused to let reason sway its conviction. The battle was beginning to make me dizzy. "Oh, alright," I groaned as I shook Bo awake. "I'm holding out for the possibility that there's a good God, but to get us out of this chapter, I'm willing to put 'POSSIBLE, BUT WHAT ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS' down." Bo yawned. "It's your dream." He pushed the pencil, and it floated over to me. I wrote it in and waited for the Chapter to disappear, but it floated overhead, just out of reach, but not so far that I didn't know it was there. "Sorry, but it won't go away until you can either prove or disprove it," Bo shrugged. I sighed, but then I saw to my relief that we had gotten up to the next Chapter.   Table of Contents | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter