How Nihilistic Has Our Society Become?

Yesterday, my boyfriend and I were sitting on the couch watching Ugly Betty and surfing the net. Yes, we're a household of multi-taskers. Anyways, my boyfriend stumbled upon an article about Steven Hawking's views on God. Recently, Mr. Hawking has come out of the closet about his new-found belief in atheism which he bases on the fact that spontaneous creation exists in nature and therefore, can account for something as complex as Earth's life cycle.

Now, I'm not much of a science person so I'm not going to attempt to comment on a process I know nothing about. However, I highly doubt that spontaneous creation, even if this is an actual scientific process, accounts for something as vast and complex as the universe which -- took billions of years of evolution to develop as it is now.

Even though I'm not a science person, I've always admired Sci-Fi -- especially the good series like Star Trek. All I can really think about when I hear the phrase spontaneous creation is an image of Q snapping his fingers and bringing about tangible changes in the world around him. Obviously, people can't do that and the genre is called Sci-Fi for a reason. Because it's fiction.

But Mr. Hawking is not asserting that people have brought this process about. The universe, he says, is capable of this process all by itself. However, this is problematic too. How much do we really even know about the universe? What published evidence is there to support his outrageous claims? And the bigger question is: Why on earth would anyone take spiritual/theological advice from a high-level astrophysicist? That's like taking cooking advice from someone who's never cooked.

The sad thing is that there are a lot of people who will believe this man. They will come to the conclusion that life is all just some silly, happy accident. This kind of thinking leads to nihilism and nihilism will be the undoing of the human race. As Nietzsche said over a hundred years ago, mankind has not found anything to replace the concept of deity. In the 21st century, people think that science is the answer to everything. But science is limited to what we know about the world and therefore, cannot be a valid replacement for deity. The Dalai Lama commented on this in his book "Ethics for the New Millennium".

As a proud pagan, I will be the first person to tell someone to do what they feel in their heart is right, to follow their own path and to make their own decisions in life. However, when we limit ourselves to a spiritually devoid world where nothing exists but matter that we can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell -- we have given up our position as human beings and placed ourselves lower than animals. We have, in this century, given up our higher selves in pursuit of answers that we will never find. We must accept the fact that some questions will never have answers and that some questions will have answers that we may not like.

This world that we've created is honestly quite depressing. The world the New Atheists want: no deity(ies), no spirituality, no unconditional love, no solid friendships/relationships, no forgiveness for being human and making mistakes. When you cut out deities or spirituality, you inevitably place human beings on an impossible pedestal. You expect too much from them because you "deitize" them. You base your relationships on merit and not on kindness, love, or compassion. You become a mean and bitter person. This might explain why many of the "hardcore" atheists I've met are honestly sad and pathetic people. They hold stupid grudges. They think the world owes them something for their so-called "suffering". They are spoiled and rotten to the core.

The world we live in is so nihilistic that we have background checks for everyone and everything. Are you really so fearful of the world that you need to background check someone you're dating, without any solid reasoning behind it? Do we really need background checks for min. wage, crap jobs? Do we really need to drug test people for jobs that pay like crap? Do our partners have to be rich, from good families? Do they have to be perfect? Do our friends have to always live up to our standards? Can't they just be our friends? Do you really need that stupid expensive Apple product? Really? (Okay, I hate Apple so I just had to throw that in there.)

The point is that the reason we've become so hard on each other, the reason we expect way too much out of people, the reason why everything is so fucked up is because society is run by a bunch of nihilists in suits. Seriously. And I won't be taking spiritual advice from a scientist. I hope you don't either.