There Is No Inherent Meaning in the Universe

This post arose out of thinking over my sister-in-law Rachel's very valid objection to Jahweh: His Remarkable Rise that I was possibly confusing deity & divinity in that piece of writing.

Monotheism: it's not the outcome of the history of ideas, it's just another stage in that history.

I am prepared to accept a kind of ultimate divinity - but - it is one which is unknown & unknowable, in the sense of whatever you say or think about it, it is not that - like the Tao, or apophatic theology in the Christian tradition. As it says at the very opening of the Tao te Ching:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

- trans. Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English

This Divinity is beyond the capacity of human conceptualisation. It is certainly not God the father or the Trinity.

(In passing, the Trinity is never referred to by Jesus, it appears nowhere in the Gospels. You can see how it can be derived from the Gospels, but it is not actually present in them as an idea.)

So what is the point of It, this unknowable Divinity ?

There isn't one. I don't believe there is any ultimate meaning in life, or that the Universe or Nature has any intentions for us. The Universe & everything in it are simply a set of processes working themselves out. The Universe doesn't mean anything, & that doesn't matter. The only meanings there are are the ones we ascribe, individually &/or collectively. These meanings are not inherent in the Universe, & discovered by us. We put them there in the first place.

So - if the Universe is meaningless, if there's no God commanding, or Divinity to discover & conform to, what is the basis of morality ? The basis of morality is practical. Certain behaviours lead to better outcomes for everybody, & that is desirable.

What I am saying here is not The Truth, it is my Truth.

With these kind of speculations, I may not know, but I know that you don't know either. The one thing I know for sure is that nobody, neither me nor you, knows anything for sure about the ultimate purpose of life.

I am most definitely not arguing that nothing can be known. If my left foot is chopped off, that's a fact. If I leave the house at 11.26 as opposed to any other time, that's a fact. If I catch a disease & die, that's a fact. It is precisely because in my opinion there are such things as certain facts that I am arguing that the nature of the Divine, & the ultimate nature & purpose (if any) of the Universe & of human life are not among these certain facts. All there ever can be is a given individual's best guess.

So what of the gods & goddesses I mentioned in Jahweh: His Remarkable Rise ? To me, the gods are personifications of psychological forces within humans, & of natural phenomena. I do not think there is any externally existing God, or gods. The gods are metaphors. They are particularly rich & powerful culturally invested & sanctioned metaphors.

The lack of inherent meaning does not mean we are abandoned, because there never was anyone or anything there to start off with. It means we are free to discover our own meaning. Does this inevitably lead to a philosophical free-for-all ? Absolutely. The more the merrier.