Gerard Bodifée 0501
Geert: Do we as human beings find meaning in the cosmos by taking a religious approach to it?
Bodifée: That’s right. People who see me as a scientist often object when they hear me talk about the meaning of life and the need for religion. People often accuse me of deceiving them, because as a scientist I know that all they are is molecular machines, and that the earth is just a physical phenomenon with no meaning, the interplay of molecules, and that everything will disappear back to nothing. When the sun explodes, that’ll be it, there’ll be nothing left of us. And none of it has any meaning! "And you start talking about meaning and deification... " they say, "you’re deceiving us!" Well actually, at first sight, these people are quite right! It’s perfectly true that this is all just the play of molecules. And when I look at those molecules, there is indeed no meaning. They are just doing their thing: they create forces, then fall apart again... And that’s what I am too: a construct like that. I, too, will fall apart again in the end. Too true! But then again, what a marvel!
Even if it has no meaning, I can still give it meaning. I possess the ability to create meaning for myself. And this is humanity’s true creativity. It is not the fact that we possess all kinds of technology and ideals, but rather the fact that I can choose my own goals. I create my purpose where before there was none. The accusation that people like Feuerbach, Marx and Freud threw at religion, namely that we project our own inner feelings in our religious statements, and that God is only our illusion, a figment of our imagination, is in a certain sense grounded in truth. Indeed, everything I say about God comes from my imagination, is my construction.
The Bible tells us that God created us in his image, but it is also true that we create God in our image. And while we must accept this, it does not detract from the deeper reality that the very fact that we do this creates the reality of which we speak. In this incomplete world, God does not exist in the way that the objects here on the table exist. And you could say that this is the point being made by the atheist. If the word "exist" is used in the sense that "this sugar pot exists"... well, if that exists, then God does not exist.
We are talking here about differences in meaning. When I talk about the existence of God, then I am talking about an existence which I project from within my own limited existence, but then without all its limitations. No limitations left, completion reached. And I try to speak about this. I must try to project images of it, and those images then lead me onward.
Critics will always say that these images are just constructs, and I admit this. But these images put me on a path towards a reality that I create myself. And in that sense we are all God-makers. We are constructing this universe, we are making our contribution, and when we follow Teilhard de Chardin or any other visionary spirit, then this becomes our road towards God, and the end point of that road will be God.
And then, that God is not some point in the future, which has no existence now but only far off in the future as a sort of final destination. No, this God is the absolute reality, which holds every moment of time within it, including this present moment. And this moment makes its own contribution to the coming into being of that absolute reality.