Recently I had a conversation with a number of like-minded and well educated individuals. I found that they tended to fall into two camps depending on upbringing: Theological and agnostic. None were actual atheists, and depending on world view, several would be best described as absolutist theists. The existence of God, as a moral higher power, appears to be critical to the human condition. Without the belief in a higher moral good than the self or state, individualism leads to hedonism and decay.
Therefore, let’s examine a few positions on the existence of God in the twenty first century. As a somewhat non-Abrahamic absolute monotheist, I often find myself at odds with both the orthodoxy of Christianity and the ideas of modern pagan worshipers. I consider atheism to be a position of ignorance born out of personal narcissism. Atheism is often a position against the ruling order due to some personal hurt. Atheism is relied upon by narcissists to justify immoral behavior and self-righteous anger. It also serves the interests of a modern state to possess an atheist population. Atheism as an anti-Abrahamic tradition can make some degree of sense, but often is the last resort of those who lack the imagination or wisdom to piece together a reality that includes God.
Raised by atheists, I am familiar with its successes and failings. The time has come for a reevaluation of traditional religiosity. The need is obvious: The failure of churches, destruction of the social contract, the moral disaster that is neoliberalism, and the structural collapses created as a result of the industrial revolution. A revitalization is needed. We, as a species, are no longer simple post-agricultural farmers. We need to adopt a mindset appropriate to acknowledge God in a way that fits into what we know of Creation and our existing social frameworks while remaining backwards-compatible with traditional belief systems.
Introduction: God of the Gaps
Modern anti-theism (a more appropriate term than Atheism) is heavily reliant on a popular, but outdated view of history. Prior to the development of the scientific method, many of the religious cornered themselves primarily with explaining reality. The “God of the Gaps” fallacy is used by modern neoliberalism to decry all religious truth and deconstruct it as referenced in my previous article. Religion, to the progressivist, is a safety blanket that serves no purpose but to ease the existence of the believer. Thus the neoliberal finds himself morally superior to the believer by the perceived notion of being mature enough to face reality as it is. This is, of course, inaccurate. To understand why, it is necessary to examine the premise.
As the scientific method was used to uncover mysteries of the universe traditional religion began to decline. One of the reasons is the propensity of the religious to claim “god did it” when they do not know how some aspect of reality functions. This goes from biochemistry to gravity and tidal forces. The result is that the religious mind finds itself placed into a progressively smaller and smaller space. As the sciences expanded to comprehend most of reality, “god” became confined; an invocation used to explain less and less. Thus one of the original purposes religion: to explain why the world is as it is, became extraneous to the physical sciences. Atheists viewed this as god being extraneous to all human existence. A view obviously incorrect in the era of cultural decay.
Over time, it became obvious that the scientific method was highly effective at discerning the natural world. Thus one cultural aspect of God came to serve no purpose: explaining the inexplicable. When the mystery was conquered through number and measure, God shrank. The effectiveness of the sciences in deconstruction led to the bizarre cultural belief that there existed nothing beyond what was published in academic institutions.
Of course this all comes down to a false dichotomy that progressive Atheists are happy to exploit: The idea that God only exists where the light of rationality has not yet shone.
A potent dismissal of the Creator figure only if the Creator exists as nothing more than a bearded man in the clouds. Those ideas are long, long gone in modern culture, so it is necessary to update our perspective of what God actually is. Not external to the rational world, but integral to it. What if we consider God to be closely synonymous with Truth?
If the God of the Gaps is replaced by the God that is Truth, then suddenly the presence of a Creator figure again becomes rationally self-evident. Hyper-rationality describes many things, it describes the how of our physical universe. It does not describe morality nearly as well. Modern science does not dive into the why of the universe; that being a question left to philosophers… and priests. Rather than claiming that rationality has slain God, consider it another avenue by which one might approach Him. The question of why we are here, if we are here for a reason, and what this whole universe thing is for has no clearer an answer now than it did ten thousand years ago. Rationality is a tool, not a craftsman.
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
~Werner Heisenberg
The above statement by Werener Heisenberg is ultimately true. Still, there are many reasons for the rise of an anti-theistic mentality:
Puritanism and Zealotry on the part of religious extremists in the 80s and 90s creating a backlash.
The hyper-materialist nature of a small-minded humanist morality common among progressives.
The ease with which a weak thinker can iteratively apply scientific research practices, leading to a surplus of such individuals in academia and industry.
When one abandons the God of the Gaps and expands the possible definition to less humanized aspects of Truth, then these flaws in anti-theism become self evident. The cultural context of the West lacks a Creator, it lacks Myth, and it lacks a home for its own people. There is widespread depression, hopelessness, and a malaise that has taken many of our people and intuitions. An existence without meaning creates a thirst not quenched by hedonism, social media, or degeneracy. People want more. People want something real. Antitheism has created an environment actively hostile to humanity. Still, traditional frameworks of the esoteric do not fit cleanly. So we build a new one.
In the context of this new era, I’ll posit two positions on theism. The first position is that of the pragmatist: It is a discussion of why we need God in human societies. Without God and without a higher moral arbiter humanity will fall to infighting, hedonism and state-sanctioned totalitarianism. Humanity needs God to function. The second is the rationalist position: That there absolutely exists a Creator, that there appears to be a plan for how the universe functions and that mankind has a purpose in it, and that serving said purpose is a moral good. The Creator does care about us, and the existence of a creator only needs to marginally be taken on faith. Most of the existence of a Creator can be rationally discerned from the structure of His Creation.
A Pragmatists Position on God
The trope of the noble savage is wrong: society does not make people evil, it is required to hold back the worst aspects of human nature. Complex social systems are a requirement for a a sizeable civilization. The larger the civilization, the more complex the society becomes. Humanity requires organization to cope with the significant stresses of dense population.
Ultimately religion serves the purpose of a non-coercive social force. A government is an inherently coercive force. Government requires the ability to execute violence in the enforcement of edicts. Among the unique aspects of Western traditions is the separation of moral powers between Church and State… that is the state operates through coercion, while the Church operates through moral taboo. Unlocking that distinction is one of the ground-breaking social discoveries that led to the rapid development of Faustian civilization.
Religion represents a moral force that creates a moral framework. The moral framework can act in conjunction with government, or justify the overthrow of government. Religion creates a moral framework that can ensure honesty on behalf of rulers. When the People posses religion as a moral guide, government can be held to a moral standard that is higher than the mere laws of man.
Without a higher moral authority, governing bodies have a tendency to overreach quickly and catastrophically. No atheistic society in human history has ever survived more than a few generations without either a spiritual revival, total collapse, or suffering conquest by a neighboring religious nation. Religion creates social stability by providing answers to questions that rationalism cannot answer:
A reason for human suffering. Without some sort of spiritual purpose, suffering becomes intolerable and thus the larger culture tends towards extreme risk aversion and hedonism.
An out for the disenfranchised. Those who are disenfranchised in society are a highly destabilizing influence if not presented with some form of spiritual fulfilment. This goes both for the very intelligent and the very poor. A religious institution can can house those who do not fit into the social morays and utilize those people in an effective manner (nuns, shamans, abbots, and the like). This is why all academic institutions began as religious institutions. Simultaneously religion provides community and a sense of belonging for the poorest of society. This is the “opiate of the masses” function that thinkers of have spoken about in the past. It is a requirement for cultural stability, not a flaw that allows for oppression. Without it, violence and coercion become the primary methods of achievement as we’ve seen in the Soviet Union.
A method of passing on cultural history. Religion is the collective memory of a people. The solutions to various moral and environmental problems embedded in folklore, fables, and tales. A religion passes on information on how to function in society. Information which is still not easily contained philosophical treaties, objective history, or scientific fact. When religion is eliminated from a people, the people become unbounded; often depressed, dangerous, or both. Religion serves as a moral framework and bulwark against local cultural destabilization.
A non-coercive force for social stability. Religion creates taboo’s and social morays which are not enforced by the weight of law. Religion often acts as a non-coercive partner to government. Violence belongs to government, but righteousness belongs to religion. A significant, and repeated mistake in the 20th and 21st centuries has been attempting to legislate morality. One cannot use the force of law to define good and evil and force one upon the populace while expunging the other. Religion serves this purpose first by creating a set of acceptable behaviors, second by providing a method for those who break taboos to seek redemption. Many ancient religions (in a practice that should be revived) even had specific holy days or conditions, where one was permitted to breach social taboos. In so doing there was release provided to a society that desperately needed it. Uncreative atomized midwits, bureaucrats and miserable cat-ladies are hardly capable of that level of nuance in legislation, so using the legal system to enforce morality always becomes byzantine and socially destructive.
Direction for zealots. There is a percentage of the population that are zealots. They have always been zealots, they will always be zealots. The atheists of the 20th century were of the opinion that zealotry is caused by organized religion. The 21st century has proven that false. Extreme zealots will rage wherever and whenever they are provided with a reason to do so. Zealots will always make up around 35% of the population (excluding mass casualties or wars). Zealots will take the torch of religion and run with it as far as they can go, creating more puritan and extreme versions of scripture until they consume themselves. What’s worse is when zealots lack a religion they’ll create their own. A religion can provide a tempering force or a direction for zealots. Send them on missions, send them to war, commission them to craft art, use their zeal to build temples and monuments. A pastor or priest can calm his flock when enraged. Without a structured religion, however, zealots begin building their own semi-religious insanity. That’s the origin of modern woke-progressivism: zealous individuals without direction. Recently, zealots have taken up the irreligious neoliberal ideals that were dominant in society and created a version so destructive, puritan, and extreme that they seek to hold the whole of society hostage. Woke-progressivism has become a non-theistic-religion with dogma, thought leaders, and networks, but no effective method of tempering. Unbounded zealots are far more dangerous and destructive than those contained by religious institutions. Religion can be used to aim them at a problem instead of letting them destroy the society they were born in.
As an example of religion performing a critical function: Polygamy was common in human history until a number of religious institutions effectively rendered it taboo. Religion acted as a cultural history that improved the function of society. When each young man can have his own girl and his own children, there is less destructive competition between men. Stabilizing society in this way then leads to more complex economic systems which leads to more role specialization and systematization. Then, because every one has a stake in society, it is possible to raise larger armies, build larger economies to maintain them, and forge empires.
While religion is a highly pragmatic institution for our civilization, we must be aware of its shortcomings as well. As far as pragmatism goes, there are fundamental flaws embedded in how the West views religion. Tabula Raza (the blank slate) is the idea that human nature and values are completely dependent on socialization and that there is no significant genetic component to human behavior or psychology. This piece of dogma is required for liberalism to function, but is also patently untrue. It is religion that renders ideas like this possible to flourish. Without religion, they fail and fail catastrophically. In a religious context there is no dogma that states different peoples must be governed the same way… but if one forces tabula raza to be a cultural ideal without religion, then it becomes a materialist mindset. Meaning that choosing to govern different peoples in line with their own unique needs becomes a moral failing. These are the false ideals that led to 20 year long wars in the middle east to “institute democracy.”
While religion is required for a functional society, the same religion will not work for all peoples. Ultimately there is a God, but how the religion becomes embedded into the social structure is adapted to different cultural and ethnic groups. An obvious example lies in the differences in how Buddhism is practiced in India as compared to China. In many ways the practices are inversions of one another, but through the religion both societies find a stable balance of the esoteric and the practical.
The American population has forged a very different view on God from that forged in Europe. The Hispanic population and Hispanic Catholicism are completely different from Celtic Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. Mormonism is a very American style relationship with God, though how the Church of the Latter Day Saints actually functions in practice is up for debate. Baptism is another form of highly Americanized religion. What works for us does not work for other peoples, and the arrogance of the woke progressive mind in assuming so is a form of dangerous zealotry.
Returning to an era of household spirits, city saints, and a national God is a pragmatic approach. A nation cannot function without a God, but expecting all practices to be homogenized is a fools errand. As a people we must acknowledge a God for our civilization to survive, and we must engage in rite and ritual to know that God. It is a legacy for civilization. It’s a legacy of our gender roles, our hierarchies, our mistakes and our triumphs. A legacy to pass to the next generation that they might learn from the mistakes we’ve made. We’ve made a lot this last century or two.
A Rationalists Position on God
God is often interpreted as a moralizing man in the sky with a beard, that interpretation is shaky at best, and destructive at worst. Rather, God is a system or series of structures that reality is built around. There are many paths to God. Here is a logical and somewhat technical, exploration through mathematics. A rationalist position that requires a fair amount of background:
Those familiar with mathematics and physics are aware that the Universe, as we understand it, operates by a set of specific parameters. Specific laws and values are required to understand the relationship of various objects in the universe to each other. One critical piece of mathematical infrastructure required is the use of calculus which allows a physicist to easily convert from (for example) position, to velocity, to acceleration. Mathematically this is one example of many. If calculus cannot be performed, then our ability to apply mathematics to reality ceases.
Presuming that mathematicians and physicists discover facts about the universe, it appears that these relationships we’ve discovered are integral to the function of reality. Calculus requires infinitesimals and infinities to function. Fundamentally, without these mathematical tools, it is impossible to calculate reality. We live in a mathematical universe, numbers are the governing substrate to everything that we experience. In one way or another, without numbers, reality simply doesn’t work.
What’s particularly interesting about this is the fact that neither infinity, nor an infinitesimal exists within the universe. Reality cannot be measured at a scale smaller than a plank length, or larger than the diameter of the visible universe. There are limits to the scale of the universe that do not permit these things to exist.
Therefore it seems that these numbers which are required (along with other mathematical laws and processes) do not exist in physical fashion. Not in our universe anyway. Given that they aren’t here, yet the universe is here, the only reasonable observation to make is that these things must exist somewhere else. A sort of hardware to the software that is reality (an analogy, the universe is probably not a simulation). It is therefore reasonable to presume the existence of a vast mathematical realm of forms that is separate from us, but which our physical reality is built on top of. A series of rules, laws, and relationships, that are defined by something that is more fundamental than ourselves. Even in an infinite number of universes… infinity is still a type of number: mathematics works the same in all of them.
There is a substrate to reality. There also appear to be a few properties that make entities such as ourselves inevitable. It appears that complexity is baked into the laws of entropy and thermodynamics. We aren’t some random fluke of creation, we’re the inevitable result of the laws of the Universe. In systems where energy flows from a low entropy state to a high entropy state, complex systems naturally develop. High complexity systems that are powered by the flow of energy and rise in net entropy are inevitable. As entropy goes up, highly ordered and complex phenomena emerge: on the scale of hot and cold water over a few minutes the results are complex vortices and convection cells. On the scale of stars, solar systems, and eons of time, the result is highly ordered civilization-building life. The complex ordered systems accelerate the flow of Entropy. The larger the system and longer the energy flow occurs for, the more complex the result.
The structure of entropy, being baked into the laws of reality, produces the existence of highly complex entities such as ourselves… and as far as we know, we are the most complex things in the universe. The old anthropocentric worldviews may in fact be accurate. We may be the most complex thing the Universe is ever going to produce, and over time we continue to grow even more complex. It’s likely that we won’t be “done” growing for thousands or millions of years. It is the nature of thermodynamically unstable systems like our universe to continue growing in complexity for as long as they exist. We have a lot of time to figure things out.
I have faith we will one day figure things out.
In conclusion: There exists an abstract mathematical substrate that has baked specific laws into reality. Laws that make our existence in the universe, or the existence of something very much like us, inevitable. If one is going to go out on a limb and presume that there is any purpose to reality, then clearly we, ourselves and our civilization, play a significant role in that ultimate purpose. So what is it that we do that no other animal or complex entity does? We are little bits of the universe, the only little bits as far as we know, capable of abstractly conceptualizing themselves. We are the bits capable of abstractly conceptualizing the universe. The ones capable of abstractly conceptualizing God.
If that is true, then the purpose of the universe, us within it, and the larger reality seems self-evident. The purpose of our civilization is to one day, in the very, very distant future, come to learn the mind of God. Through us God knows himself. It is moral to participate in improving our capabilities as civilization, and it is moral to promote the best of our people in the interest of doing so. Simultaneously, it is immoral to behave in ways that hinder this ultimate spiritual journey that we’ve begun. This journey could last a Billion years, and it is the duty of each of us to behave as pioneers taking a few small steps towards that ultimate end, or aiding those who do.
This coincides with what we can also intuit regarding good and evil. Bringing out the best in ourselves is morally good, while possessed of evil intent, such as woke progressives, will do everything in their power to harm the future of a great civilization.
There is a god. He isn’t a moralizing man in the sky with a beard. God is Truth. God is teh Foundation, the substrate that generated our universe, our species, and has assigned us a place in it. What difference is a day and a billion years to God? He is bigger than us, bigger than our histories. Our civilization will one day grow to know Him, and until then, He waits. From a rationalist position, not-believing-in-God seems more a matter of self obsession than a matter of truth.
…
When he was a young soldier Rene Descarte was visited by an angelic apparition in a dream who delivered wisdom that fundamentally changed us:
“The Conquest of Nature is to be Accomplished by Number and Measure.”
…
The original source for this quote appears to have vanished into the ether. I choose to blame anti-theistic modernist tech-bros.
As a People, We Need to Recognize God
Debate the Aspects of God all one likes. Debate the moral structure He gives to the universe. Denying the existence of God is not only a questionable position from a rational perspective, it is actively damaging to ones own society. God is required for a civilization to perform its function: the survival of its own people.
A civilization is a history of culture, a history of nation, and an ethnic and religious legacy. If unwilling to recognize God and revive an honest and heartfelt religiosity, then that civilization is going to end by hedonism or conquest decadence. Meaningless debates on the nature of God are much less important than the fact that there is one. The esoteric aspects of our existence rests on questions that rationality does not answer: What is beauty? Why are we here? What is art and why are we compelled to fashion it? Who should we be, and why? What is the real value of a human life?
As a people, we need to know God. In the face of modern rationalism and woke idolatry it is necessary to argue for the esoteric through the language of rationalism. That is not the end goal though, the end goal is to be better than we would be without God as individuals and as a society. Eliminate that which is evil, preserve that which is good. Ultimately, spiritual truth provides answers where Apollonian Aesthetics and Faustian Rationality falls short… A new civilization is forming, one that will recognize God for what He is: Truth. Mankind is not yet ready to look on God in his true form, and we won’t be for a very very long time. But we are learning.
EDIT (5-7-2025) This video was recently posted where Jordan Peterson “debates” atheists. The result is that Jordan Peterson defines God in a way almost identical to the way this article defines God. Specifically around 13:00 if you’re interested in watching the video:
So far, so good. It's a long read but it's definitely worth going through. And I came to the same conclusion that humanity needs a purpose for existence. Individuals require purpose to be motivated.
More from myself - after I finish.
Good Stuff!
OAD
Great piece, it's interesting that I'm finding so many like minds walking on parallel paths in this mysterious forest. The new Axial Age is an interesting time to be alive.
I wanted to add something to your Church/State dichotomy; not a correction, since it's not relevant to the subject matter, but just because the multi-polar governance of civilization is something I've been thinking a lot about lately, and it's a necessary bulwark against the tyrannies of state-centred and faith-centred societies.
I like to break it down into a trichotomy of State, Church, and Marketplace. The former two you described already, the latter is where free people congregate to build their own temporary institutions, agreements, and culture. It's that place that Kipling did dirty service to in Gods of the Copybook Headings (not that I don't love that).
It came up in conversation recently, when I was talking to a zoomer about a theoretical situations where a landlord was being abusive to their renters. I said to them, "I agree that what you describe is wrong, but are you sure that the government is the best way to deal with that?" It really gave them pause, and they started thinking about alternatives.
That's why the marketplace is so important; it's the realm where things are messy, where heavily armed cops or pious priests aren't going to make the situation better, it's where social shaming can be effectively applied. The democracy of the commons, the self-regulation by industries who adopt common standards of their own devising. It's often a more effective tool than legislation or moralizing.