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.

Jahweh: His Remarkable Rise

"Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests."

- Jim Morrison, 'An American Prayer'


Jahweh or Jehovah, if I may name that god so familiarly, has had a remarkable journey from obscure Bronze Age tribal deity to his present exalted position - if we identify him with Allah - as Boss of 3 of the world's major religions.

It's like the spread of coffee from its home in Ethiopia to its status now of being consumed throughout the world.

The spread of an idea is like the spread of a commodity. People pass it on because they like it & because it suits them, & other people new to it accept it & incorporate it into their lives for the same reason. At least, that's when it happens benignly. Less happily, ideas & commodities are also spread by force & conquest of course, & here resemble the spread of disease.

I cannot accept that Jahweh/Jehovah/Allah/God the Father/God the Trinity is the one true God. How can the Trinity be simultaneously 3 gods & 1 god anyway ? Rowan Williams might know; he is apparently one of the leading experts in the world on the Trinity. But at first glance it doesn't seem very likely; & I strongly suspect that once Occam's Razor had been to work on the reasons why the Trinity is in fact 1 god, they would be left looking pretty tattered.

I recognise Jahweh as a god, but not the one true God. I reserve the right to worship some or all of the Celtic, Norse/Anglo-Saxon, Greek, Egyptian & Romano-British gods & goddesses, all of whom are in my cultural inheritance as an Englishman and a European. For me personally I would include Woden, Thor, Aphrodite, Demeter, Isis & Osiris. More primally, I reserve the right to worship directly the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Sky, the Earth & the Sea, Sacred Animals; & to experience the sacred & the numinous wherever I find it.* You may say this is rather a mish-mash, but isn't Christianity, in terms of its ritual & iconography, just such a mish-mash ?

If we take Christianity & Islam together (I can't find a reliable figure for the current total number of adherents to Judaism), Jahweh/Allah has 3.7 billion adherents who regard him exclusively as the one true God - 2.2 billion Christians & 1.5 billion Muslims. He hardly needs me as well.

In this connection, you will be acquainted I suggest with the terms polytheism, monotheism, atheism, agnosticism, deism, animism, & pantheism. But have you heard of the term henotheism ? I stumbled across it while reading about religion in the Classical world. It means you have one god who you personally, or as a tribe or a cult, venerate in particular, but that you are perfectly happy at the same time to recognise the validity of all gods & godesses whatsoever. A position of total tolerance. It strikes me as supremely civilised. And dangerous to the exclusive claims of Christianity, Judaism & Islam, which is why I think you never hear the term. It's suppressed as an option. The options you're presented with are the ones I named at the start of this paragraph, which are in fact the possibilities of religious belief & practice viewed from a monotheistic perspective, one that regards monotheism as true, right & natural.

When it comes to Christianity, I don't hear the term henotheism. The terms I do hear are heresy, schism, anathema, excommunication & idolatry.

On the subject of idolatry, I find it singular that the Christian Church, East & West, condemns idolatry so roundly while at the very same time practicing it so enthusiastically. It's odd sometimes to see a copy of The Ten Commandments set up in a church which is simultaneously full to bursting with graven images. The proscription of graven images in The Ten Commandments is explicit & insistent, & Muslims & observant Jews in general follow it's obvious & intended meaning. The proscription of graven images from The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 is worth quoting in full because of the stress it is given, & the prominence, being the Second Commandment:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the the third & fourth generation of them that hate me;

& shewing mercy to thousands of them that love me, & keep my commandments.

Now, in a pagan world, not having graven images is a ready & highly visible way to distinguish your religion from all the others around you, who precisely do have graven images which they venerate.

The Christian Church defends its use of graven images by asserting it is not idolatry to have them, because the worshiper does not worship the image itself but rather what it represents. This is sheer sophistry. The proscription in the Second Commandment is perfectly clear & straightforward. There have often been iconoclastic movements & controversies in both the Eastern & Western Churches, & quite rightly so.

The Christian use of images is an excellent example of the fact that mores are vastly more important in terms of their effect on human behaviour than the official morality that people are supposed to be following at a given time. Mores shape almost everything, morality virtually nothing.

A final thought on Christianity. It has always struck me as funny, and so human, that the opposing factions in Christianity call themselves Catholic, meaning universal when it is nothing of the kind, & Orthodox, meaning 'Right-Believing', or 'Just so you're clear, We're Right & Everyone Else is Wrong.'

It's not Sacred - it's sacred to you !


With thanks & respect to Xenophanes, William of Occam & Voltaire. Further reading: The Lost Gods of England by Brian Branston.

*Before I wrote this, I had no idea I was such an old hippy. But let it stand .....