Day Two: Reasons People Don't Like Thinking About God

The last post kind of left off on an ominous cliffhanger: the overhanging dread of some huge, unseen force controlling reality. So today, we'll begin with a list of reasons people try to avoid thinking about the prospect of an all-seeing, all-knowing conscious being, whether it has good intentions or not:

Reason 1: Fear

It's one thing to be an over-thinker lying awake at night wondering what sorts of infinite possibilities are all around us that we don't even know or understand. It's quite another to let that mindset into your daily life and routine on a regular basis; paranoia as a natural state of mind might be the norm for some, but is by no means an enjoyable experience for everyone.

Reason 2: Indifference

This might be the big reason a lot of people don't take the bigger questions in life seriously; it's especially in the case with the "This doesn't affect my life" mindset, which is a pretty strong factor with an invisible being. If taken as a rule of immediacy, thinking about what God wants with us will usually take the backseat.

Reason 3: Too Busy

This reason seems legit for people who prefer staying busy to the paranoia; questions like "What is our purpose in life?", "Is there something after death?", and "Is there alien life or something outside our universe?" don't necessarily apply to going out for groceries, washing dishes, doing laundry, having lunch, or making sure the kids aren't climbing over the back fence. Although it can often trigger its own forms of paranoia, it makes paranoia of the overall creator feel of less relevance.

Reason 4: Control

This one might seem like an unofficial subset of Reason 1, but for the fact that fear itself is not always the motivator; or, at least, not always perceived as being a motivator. My mother has a friend who once put it like this: "I do believe in God; He stays over there and I stay over here." It's not necessarily avoiding thinking about Him more than accepting Him and His work, as long as they don't interfere with us; it's the "He can do His thing and I'll do mine" mentality. We're okay with there being a God of some sort as long as He doesn't mess with us.

Reason 5: Outright Rejection

Whether for reasons of the extent of absurdity in the various depictions of a god, rejection of the practices one supposedly engages in, or the central "seeing is believing" foundation, some people just don't approach the idea of there being a God at all just because they don't. For some, it just naturally never occurs to them to think about the subject as a possible reality; for others, muddled stories of the "Angry God" and frequent displays of temper are more off-putting simply for the lack of common decency. Whatever the reasons; whether because of mixed mythologies, other ideological systems, or just no hard evidence; for certain people, the idea just doesn't feel believable.

Most reasons people don't like giving much thought to the idea of an overall deity of some kind can basically be boiled down to something of the nature of these five. Some people are perfectly willing to accept the idea of one, as long as it won't mess up their personal life. But, whatever the reasons for avoiding this subject, here's our next question for analysis: How important is thinking about God to our daily routines?

Plenty of people go through life-changing experiences met through near-death experiences or outright tragedy, like the death of a loved one, natural disasters, or traumatizing abuse. This can be said to be on the Reason 1 end of the spectrum; fear can either make us move to action or freeze up. For people who live in a normal state of fear, it's uncomfortable, unsettling, and generally makes life very hectic and messy to have to go through. As a result, many people think it would just make things easier if nobody ever had to fight wars, be poor, get sick, go hungry, or have any problems at all. Forming Utopia sounds like a good objective, but there's one glaring inconsistency no one has ever been able to fix: nature.

According to my biology professor (as of, like, 2015), an experiment was once conducted on an amoeba, where scientists put it in an environment where it had everything it needed; food, enough light, etc.; and made sure it didn't have to move very far to get it. This amoeba died very quickly because amoebas are not sedentary creatures; they need to work to get around, fight for their food, and strive to survive or it will kill them. A similar idea was embodied in a 2005 sci-fi movie called Serenity; a big corporation built their own planet-sized vacation resort. As a vacation resort, they wanted everyone to be at ease to help destress from the pressures of home life, so they pumped the atmosphere of their planet with a gas that increased feelings of tranquility, then hosted a test audience for a time on it to measure how well it would work. During that time, 90% of the test population literally lay down and died where they were, while the remaining 10% had an adverse reaction and became rabid, cannibalistic monsters that spiraled out of control and began ravaging the galaxy.

While the second story sounds like another version of the Russian Sleep Experiment, it carries an important message: without effort, life does not push on to adapt and evolve. Natural fears are often a motivator for moving forward; while fear of the unknown or fear of dying can keep us from doing things differently from routine, fear of sameness will prod us to change factors that range from insignificant (what to wear today) to those that carry a lot of impact (cultural traditions, segregational systems, etc.).

So, fear in due measure is good; at least, it drives our instincts of self preservation. The same principle can be applied to indifference; without the drive, life won't survive. That helps narrow down two of our original five reasons: for our drive for basic survival, fear is good and indifference is bad. We also know what happens with people who are "too busy" for things: ever see someone carrying a huge stack of assorted-sized boxes about to try to get down a flight of stairs? Life always inevitably messes with whatever carefully-laid plans we try to form; all it takes to upset our stack is one bump, and the taller the stack, the smaller the bump can upset it. Control works essentially the same way: we can't control everything life has to throw at us; we can only control our responses to it. We're living in an unstable, ever-shifting universe, which means fear is basically a given.

So that hits all but one of the five initial reasons now; the only one left is outright rejection. This one can at least be said to be the most honest; if the theory just doesn't make any sense or holds too many obvious flaws, our mind just doesn't accept it. However, back in the day, Galileo's theory of the earth's orbit around the sun didn't make much sense, either. A lot of other elements, like the complexity of the human conscious, how are art and music practical and where did we get them, still make as much sense now as they did a thousand years ago, yet we accept them because they haven't changed in nature. There are so many things we know that don't make sense to us because our mind just hasn't figured out how they work or how to explain them. Even when we do, the initial fear doesn't necessarily go away, but if that's not actually a bad thing, it might give us clearer insight as to what to do about it.

And now we can get back to our first question: Who or what is God?