You cannot start any question on religion without addressing the greatest one of all. That is, is there a God? And if there is, what implications does that have? Obviously this is where the picture starts.
The first aspect of ontology is whether there is a creator. Atheists or proponents of nihilism would assert there is not, but rather life came about as happenstance and that societies, morals, and order came from nothing. Their origin is happenstance, and even the Big Bang cannot process the origin of matter. However, the issue becomes larger. Without God, there is no sense or basis of truth. Hence, everyone’s basis of truth is inherently relative and there is no purpose of life. Yet, with no purpose, how can one assert morals or social constructs? In honesty, for atheists it’s an impossible task with loose analogies to assert principles that they desire to be universally true. While their arguments may seem logical, they are like a computer program running on a system that may or may not recognize their code, or simply questioned what good is an Apple program on Linux or Windows? What good is a PS3 game if I only have a Xbox?
The main problem is that there is no basis or source of truth. Our senses produce a perception of reality, but how is one to know whether we are living beings or operating code in a computer? Essentially in the view of atheists there is nothing and they fail to produce a counter to the Platonic argument of the shadows on the wall. With no source of truth, there is not logic, there remains no basis for arguments, there is no reason for people to do anything but unbridled selfish ambition. Using animals to justify homosexuality would give me the same right to hump any females leg because dogs do it. Kind of ridiculous, but falling victim to perverse logic has been around for a long time.
The question then boils down to whether reality is in living beings or computer simulations. While the trajectory of simulation theory is quite fascinating and may have captured me in my days of existentialism, the greater argument against simulation theory is that humans do not necessarily follow good logical patterns, while others can imagine great realities including a creator beyond our capacity. Not to say that AI and artificial learning aren’t great concepts, but in practice, they are still bounded by code and the collective ideas of all humanity. I recall two stories about AI that grabbed my attention. One is the social media bot that became a racist bigot, and the other was around business decisions whereby a program could optimize solutions but human counterparts were incapable of figuring out why. Doesn’t seem like a good idea to unleash technology on people if we cannot control or understand it, but in the grab for profit, many fools will be made.
So if that ends up being the case, the default option would then be God or many gods. While this will be addressed in a future post, the argument I would assert here is that ontology has two proper options: God as a source of truth or a computer program(mer) as a source of truth. Without either, reality doesn’t matter and there would be no reason for societies to function (as we can see from the current generation of nihilistic thinking pervading societies today). If everyone protests for their various perceptions of human rights or relative ethics, nothing will ever be produced, no relationships will ever be fostered outside of group think tanks, and society will become what all those groups are fighting against (homogenous). It only takes one strong army to destroy a divided nation to enforce a single way of living.
Ontology is necessary for establishing values, worth, beauty, systems of thinking, and many others. Otherwise, it’s mob mentality and mobs don’t tend to last as long as human culture has. I would challenge readers to examine how many of their assumptions in life are based on this principle of thought. Why do you feel guilty, respect power structures, or believe whatever it is you do? In whichever case, what constrains people from doing bad things and chaos from occurring? There are certainly no shortages of selfish or evil people to whom even laws won’t govern, but with no God, why is murder wrong? If it’s just code or we are just evolved apes, why not just act like animals or conduct ourselves free of care to others? As you can see, your values are being governed by ontology whether you like it or not as without God, asserting a value to human life becomes difficult especially in the world of relative truths and definitions of human rights.
