When I was growing up, I believed God existed. This God was a superhero, and his powers were to know everything, to manipulate reality with his thoughts, and to be perfectly good in all ways. As I learned science and contemplated philosophy, I came to realize that such a superhero does not exist. For me, that was sufficient to start calling myself an atheist. However, I remain open to non-physical, naturalism-compatible interpretations of God, such as an archetype, the impersonal, unconscious principle that separates what exists from what does not exist, or today’s topic, a hypothetical person who knows and understands everything.
As human beings, we struggle with existence. We strive to understand our place in it, how we relate to those around us, to the world, and to the universe. When difficult times happen, we want to know why. As individuals, there is so much we don’t know; most of this world is beyond our comprehension, not to mention the rest of the universe. This can be absolutely terrifying, as is captured by the fictional genre of cosmic horror. But we can find relief from this fear by imagining that there is a person who knows and understands it all, and whom we can talk to and get advice and comfort from: a God.
Of the many ways we conceptualize God, one of them is as a friend, a mentor, or even a parent. We imagine God as a person with us, who has our best intentions in mind and understands and fully appreciates the world both as it is and as it could be, who understands the whole picture and our place within it. When we talk to this God, either by words or thoughts, we call it prayer. We act as though this God is with us always, seeing our thoughts and emotions without judgment or bias, and when we are tempted to do something we feel isn’t right, thinking of how God would see the situation helps us to follow our conscience.
Some atheists criticize this version of God for being nothing more than an imaginary friend. But “imaginary friend” has childish implications, and it comes across as an insult rather than a criticism. God is much more than an imaginary friend; he is an archetype, a mythological figure with the qualities of knowledge, compassion, and empathy taken to infinite extremes.
Believers will also bristle at the word, “imaginary,” since it has connotations of being made-up and arbitrary. But archetypes are not arbitrary; they are the personification of profound things. In my mind, God is not real, because a thing is only real if it is real in the same way as matter and light and space and time; that is, physical. But archetypes are discovered, not invented, and for some people that is enough to call them real despite being non-physical. Thus, an argument here would be pedantic.
This version of God is not specific to any religion. Archetypes do not depend on the narratives in which they are expressed. My favorite short story is “The Egg,” by science fiction author Andy Weir, where the main character dies and has a conversation with this version of God about humanity and its purpose.
Despite calling myself an atheist and having a lot of issues with religions, I still sometimes act as though I am sharing my experiences with a God, and I still pray from time to time. I am not ashamed of this, nor do I see it as being inconsistent. Because what ultimately matters is not beliefs, but actions and their consequences, and sometimes acting in a spiritual or religious way helps us cope with the difficulties of life, appreciate the good things, and find the meaning in existence. This view is called Spiritual Naturalism. Like all great mythology and fiction, God does not have to exist in order to be significant.
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