The Tyranny of Eternal Purpose
One of the most common concerns from apologists and believers, in general, is that if there is no god, there is no meaning. Without god there can be no eternal personal purpose and therefore all there is is chaos, meaninglessness.
From my past life as a conservative Christian, in the church, and in ministry, I’ve seen that specific personal purpose is quite illusory and tortuous. If there is truly an eternal purpose it must be more general, less specific, more corporate, more communal. Therefore I am not dismissing all claims of an eternal purpose. Though, to succumb to a “Calvinistic” totalitarian prescribed purpose is to needlessly subject yourself to mental distress and suffering. For this and other reasons I am rejecting such specific eternal purpose even if true. Thankfully, there is no significant evidence to suggest it is true.
As an agnostic, I’m not anti-theist, but as a supposedly free being it is my responsibility to try all spirits including any proposed gods. The more power a being possesses the more such a being should be questioned and examined. That is a responsibility too easily shirked due to quite dire consequences to our eternal selves should we find that such a being is not worthy of our allegience. There is always a choice, its the consequences we despair of.
To create free creatures for specific purpose and then to answer such a powerful subjective need for purpose with callous contradicting ambiguity is not loving but cruel. Unless there is a better, less complicated, reason for such a yearning. Maybe the answer is simply it emerges from our self-awareness and, therefore, obvious mortality breeding a yearning for eternal existence and significance. Maybe Occam’s razor is a better tool to apply here than C.S. Lewis’ appeal to appetite for justifying the object of our appitite’s necessary existence. Maybe C.S. Lewis was committing a category error with his reasoning here.
As a parent I’ve learned through my own failure how cruel it is to impose, with all the good intentions it may entail, on my child any specific purpose of my desire’s wanting. Why create a free life just to enslave it to such oppressive reductionist specificity? Freedom is a scary thing for parents, it necessitates not filling in all the ambiguity. As a parent and as a manager I’ve also learned that mistakes are some of the most important steps forward.
Any being that would create us and then punish us for not getting it always right in such an ambiguous existence is not good, nor loving. Such a thing goes against all I’ve learned in my practical lived experience as a parent and within what authority I’ve been fortunate to be entrusted with in my work.
