I actually, I agree with you on the psychological desire evinced by many/most humans to be immortalized in thought after their death. That's evident in the monuments we place, the names we give to street and airports, etc. Where I disagree is whether the need to answer this worry can be suffcient to argue that the answer exists. Ultimately, your position seems to come down to you adopting a world-view you find comforting. I have trouble joining you there. It's really comfortable, I don't deny, but that's not what I seek in a world-view.
You know, I've already responded to this a little bit, but some other thoughts occurred to me.
My identical twin brother is an atheist, and his primary criticism is the one you make here: I've adopted a worldview that I find comforting. And I won't deny that there is some element of Pascal's wager in it -- not in the sense of heavenly reward, but simply in the sense of believing today in the meaningfulness of my actions for the future. After all, we can never really be sure either way.
But the unwritten assumption in this criticism is that there is an atheistic worldview that is more likely to be true than the theistic position I've outlined. I'm not so sure that's the case. Atheists in this day and age usually take their position as the default one, and demand some sort of demonstration of God's existence. But I don't believe that God's existence can ever be proved empirically, anyway. Why? Because I very strongly believe that God's existence is either necessary or impossible; it is not a contingent matter. In other words, if God exists, then it is because the universe could not have been any other way; likewise, if God does not exist, then it is because the universe could not have been any other way. What I can't accept is the idea of a God who might have existed or might not have... that kind of being, to me, can't really be God. God must be a basic fact about existence... or a basic fallacy about existence. And if this is true, if God's modality must be as a basic reality which is compatible with all other actual and possible realities, it follows that no empirical arguments can demonstrate either that God exists or that he does not exist. Since, that is, God is the necessarily existent who is therefore tolerant of all empirical realities, his existence can be neither verified nor falsified empirically.
The best that can be done, then, is some sort of rationalistic argument for or against God -- a metaphysical system which attempts to make sense of the universe from top to bottom. The idea of doing metaphysics is passe nowadays, probably because we are more aware than ever of how much we don't know. But any scientific theory rests on the shoulders of a metaphysics -- a comprehensive view of how the universe works -- whether that metaphysics is stated or not. We don't get to ignore the need for metaphysical speculation simply because of the liklihood that we will get very much of it wrong... because it isn't any less wrong when it's unstated. It's just disguised better.
And there are certain basic realities -- such as the emergence of complex organisms -- which science doesn't explain particularly well. Certain theistic theories have a more credible ring to them than any scientific theories I know of.
Allow me now to share some extended passages from Alfred North Whitehead's little book,
The Function of Reason. It's only 90 pages long and was originally given as a lecture, though I can't remeber at the moment where and when he gave it. In any case (any emphasis is in orginal):
-----------------------------------------------------
I will start with a preliminary definition of the function of Reason, a definition to be illustrated, distorted, and enlarged, as this discussion proceeds.
The function of Reason is to promote the art of life.
In the interpretation of this definition, I must at once join issue with the evolutionist fallacy suggested by the phrase "the survival of the fittest." The fallacy does not consist in believing that in the struggle for existence the fittest to survive eliminate the less fit. The fact is obvious and stares us in the face. The fallacy is the belief that fitness for survival is identical with the best exemplification of the Art of Life.
In fact life itself is comparatively deficient in survival value. The art of persistence is to be dead. Only inorganic things persist for great lengths of time. A rock survives for eight hundred million years; whereas the limit for a tree is about a thousand years, for a man or an elephant about fifty or one hundred years, for a dog about twelve years, for an insect about one year. The problem set by the doctrine of evolution is to explain how complex organisms with such deficient survival power ever evolved. They certainly did not appear because they were better at that game than the rocks around them. It may be possible to explain "the origin of species" by the doctrine of the struggle for existence among such organisms. But certainly this struggle throws no light whatever upon the emergence of such a general type of complex organism, with faint survival power. This problem is not to be solved by any dogma, which is the product of mere abstract thought elaborating its notions of the fitness of things. The solution requires that thought pay full attention to the empirical evidence, and to the whole of that evidence.
...
There is another factor in evolution which is not in the least explained by the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. Why has the trend of evolution been upwards? The fact that organic species have been produced from inorganic distributions of matter, and the fact that in the lapse of time organic species of higher and higher types have evolved are not in the least explained by any doctrine of adaptation to the environment, or of struggle.
In fact the upward trend has been accompanied by a growth of the converse relation. Animals have progressively undertaken the task of adapting the environment to themselves. They have built nests, and social dwelling-places of great complexity; beavers have cut down trees and dammed rivers; insects have elaborated a high community life with a variety of reactions upon the environment.
Even the more intimate actions of animals are activities modifying the environment. The simplest living things let their food swim into them. The higher animals chase their food, catch it, and masticate it. In so acting, they are transforming the environment for their own purposes. Some animals dig for their food, others stalk their prey. Of course all these operations are meant by the common doctrine of adaptation to the environment. But they are very inadequately expressed by that statement; and the real facts easily drop out of sight under cover of that statement. The higher forms of life are actively engaged in modifying their environment. In the case of mankind this active attack on the environment is the most prominent fact in his existence.
I now state the thesis that the explanation of this active attack on the environment is a three-fold urge: (i) to live, (ii) to live well, (iii) to live better. In fact the art of life is
first to be alive,
secondly to be alive in a satisfactory way, and
thirdly to acquire an increase in satisfaction. It is at this point of our argument that we have to recur to the function of Reason, namely the promotion of the art of life. The primary function of Reason is the direction of the attack on the environment.
This conclusion amounts to the thesis that Reason is a factor in experience which directs and criticizes the urge towards the attainment of an end realized in imagination but not in fact.
-----------------------------------------------------
This explanation, to me, answers the question of why life arose better than any scientific explanation I've heard. Doesn't mean it's right. Doesn't mean I don't still have a lot of questions. It just seems to me to be the most plausible idea I've heard. And this explanation itself fits better with a universe that is somehow directed, or lured, toward a particular mode of existence -- a being which wishes to promote the art of life for its own sake.
In summation... yes, we can both agree that the viewpoint I've expressed is more comfortable than the idea that we die and have not accomplished anything that will persist in any kind of meaningful way. But the fact is this: I wouldn't believe in God if I thought it was any less likely than the notion that there isn't a God. I would prefer truth and despair over self-delusion and happiness.
No one person can ever come close to being an expert in everything, but I think we must all do the best we can to examine all our unstated assumptions about how the universe works. And in my own meager investigations, my own paltry attempt to construct some sort of model for how all of THIS makes sense, THIS reality that we find ourselves a part of, I find theism to be a more credible theory than atheism. Not by a great margin, but enough.
And, as I've already said, if I
did consider atheism and theism to truly be
completely and
totally equal in their liklihood, then I will indeed pick the one that is more comforting... I have nothing to lose by doing so.
