I Don't Need a Substitute for God

 

I've had a thought floating around in my head for a while now about how my peanut allergy relates to my experience with religion. I made a short video about it recently, but the more I've thought about it, the more I've realized there's quite a bit more I want to say.

The analogy might sound a little strange at first, but I think it illustrates something about how religious and nonreligious people sometimes struggle to understand one another. Particularly when it comes to the idea of living without God.

I've been allergic to nuts my entire life. Peanuts, in particular, have always been a serious problem for me. It's one of those allergies that most people seem to understand well enough. If somebody offers me a brownie and I explain that I can't eat it because it contains nuts, the response is usually pretty straightforward.

"Oh, that's unfortunate."

Or, more commonly, "Well, more for us, I guess."

And that's generally the end of the conversation.

But every once in a while, I meet someone who just can't seem to wrap their head around the idea of not eating peanut butter.

I used to share a cubicle with a guy who absolutely loved the stuff. He was constantly eating peanut M&M's out of this enormous bag he kept around. He brought peanut butter cookies to work, and whenever he made brownies, they had nuts in them. Peanut butter seemed to be a regular part of his daily life.

The first time he offered me something, I explained that I couldn't have it because of my allergy.

He was genuinely baffled.

He started asking questions about what I ate instead. Did I buy almond butter? Hazelnut spread? Was I a Nutella guy? Surely, there had to be something I was using to replace peanut butter.

I remember being a little confused by the questions myself.

What did I eat instead?

Well, nothing. I just didn't eat peanut butter.

There are spreads I can safely eat, of course, but I've never had much interest in finding a substitute. Even some foods that don't actually trigger my allergy have that same nutty taste, and I find it unpleasant. Sunflower seed butter, for example, has never appealed to me.

I wasn't looking for an alternative because I wasn't missing anything.

And this wasn't the first time I'd encountered that reaction.

Growing up, I remember visiting friends and having their parents offer me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When I explained that I was allergic, they'd immediately start suggesting alternatives. Maybe they had another kind of nut butter. Maybe my parents bought some special substitute at home.

They were trying to be accommodating, which I appreciated, but there was an assumption behind the questions that I always found a little funny.

They seemed to think I must be missing out on something I desperately wanted.

But I've never craved a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I've never stood in my kitchen, looked at a loaf of bread and a jar of jelly, and thought, "Man, if only I had some peanut butter."

It just doesn't happen.

Peanut butter isn't part of my life. It never really has been. So I don't spend any time figuring out how to live without it.

And that's where religion comes in.

Living Without God

I've noticed that some religious people have a very difficult time understanding what it means to be nonreligious.

For someone whose entire life revolves around their faith, God can be involved in practically every decision they make.

They pray before making important choices. They give God credit for their accomplishments. They attend church every Sunday, and missing a service might make the entire week feel a little off.

When something goes wrong, they might turn to prayer. When something goes right, they might thank God. When they're uncertain about the future, they might ask what God wants them to do.

None of that is particularly unusual when you've spent your life practicing a religion. It's simply how you approach the world.

But when someone like that encounters an atheist, I sometimes get the impression that they're genuinely confused about how we manage to function.

How do you make decisions without praying?

Where do you find direction?

Who do you thank when something good happens?

How do you get through difficult experiences without God?

It's remarkably similar to someone asking what I put on my sandwiches instead of peanut butter.

The assumption is that something must take its place.

And when I explain that I simply think things through, consider my options, trust my judgment, and make decisions based on the information available to me, that doesn't always seem to satisfy them.

It's almost as though they imagine I'm consciously trying to do everything without God.

That somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, "Okay, how am I going to get through this without divine guidance?"

But that's not what happens.

I'm not going through my life trying to prove that I can function without God. I'm not making decisions in spite of God. I'm not sitting around congratulating myself for accomplishing something without supernatural assistance.

God simply isn't part of the equation.

Take something as ordinary as deciding whether to pursue a new career opportunity.

I might look at the experience I've gained over the years, my education, my abilities, and the opportunities available to me. I'll think about what I want for my future, what kind of work I enjoy, and whether a particular change would be worthwhile.

I might talk it over with my wife, consider the financial implications, and weigh the risks.

Then I'll make a decision.

A religious person might do all those same things, but also ask where God wants them to go. They might pray about the opportunity or interpret certain events as signs that they're being guided in one direction or another.

I understand why someone who believes in God would include those considerations.

But I don't.

And it's not because I'm deliberately excluding God from the process. The thought simply doesn't occur to me.

For someone accustomed to seeking God's direction, that might be difficult to imagine. But from my perspective, it's perfectly ordinary.

It's not a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the peanut butter removed.

It's just a jelly sandwich.

The Question of Whether God Exists

Some of these thoughts resurfaced recently while I was looking through public-domain books that I might want to add to my website.

I've been collecting older religious texts and other works that I think people would benefit from reading, particularly those connected to Mormonism and its historical environment.

One book I started exploring was The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine.

Paine was an eighteenth-century political writer and thinker, perhaps best known for his pamphlet Common Sense, which helped popularize the argument for American independence. In The Age of Reason, he turned his attention toward organized religion, religious revelation, and the authority of scripture.

Paine believed in God, but he rejected much of what organized religion claimed to know about God. His position was rooted in deism, a religious philosophy that became influential among certain Enlightenment thinkers.

I'm still working my way through the book, so I don't want to pretend I've developed some exhaustive understanding of Paine's arguments. But the broader concept of deism has been occupying my thoughts.

In simple terms, deism generally accepts that some kind of divine creator exists while rejecting the idea that we should rely on revealed scriptures, prophets, or organized religious institutions to understand that creator.

One common description is that God created the universe, established the natural laws governing it, and then allowed creation to operate according to those laws.

There are variations within deism, but the distinction between God and organized religion is what caught my attention.

Under this view, God may have created the universe, but that doesn't mean God established Christianity.

God may have set everything in motion, but that doesn't mean he introduced Mormonism, Islam, Buddhism, or any other religious tradition.

Those religions would be human developments, attempts by people to understand, describe, worship, or establish relationships with the divine.

And I can understand why that distinction appeals to people.

You might look around at the natural world and believe that something must have created it, while remaining unconvinced by the claims of churches, scriptures, and religious authorities.

You might believe in a creator without believing that creator has ever communicated with humanity.

But as I've been considering these ideas, I keep coming back to a fairly simple question.

What difference would that make to my life?

What Would Change If There Were a God?

People occasionally ask me whether I believe in God, even if I don't believe in any particular religion.

And my answer is that I'm open to the possibility.

I don't think I have enough information to categorically rule out every conceivable version of a god. But simply accepting that some kind of creator might exist doesn't tell me much.

What is this god?

What does it want?

Does it even want anything?

Does it know that humanity exists? Does it care?

And how would we know?

The word God comes with an enormous amount of baggage because people have attached so many different characteristics to it.

For some, God is a personal being who answers prayers, performs miracles, and communicates through prophets.

For others, God is something more abstract, perhaps an intelligence responsible for the existence of the universe or some kind of impersonal creative force.

But if we're talking about a creator who set the universe in motion and never communicated with us, then I'm left wondering how that belief would affect the decisions I make.

If God has never spoken to humanity, never provided instructions, never established moral commandments, and never intervened in our affairs, what would I do differently tomorrow if I discovered that such a being existed?

I'd still have to decide how to live my life.

I'd still need to work, pay my bills, maintain relationships, and deal with whatever problems come my way.

I'd still have to decide what's right and wrong by considering the consequences of my actions and the effects they have on other people.

I'd still have to figure out what I want to accomplish during the relatively short time I have to be alive.

The existence of a distant creator wouldn't automatically answer any of those questions.

And that's where I find myself struggling to understand the practical value of the belief.

I'm not saying the question of whether a creator exists is uninteresting. It's a fascinating question, and I think there's plenty of value in exploring it.

But the existence of a god and the relevance of that god to our daily lives are two very different questions.

A person might believe that the universe was created by an intelligence without having any reason to believe that intelligence cares whether they go to church, drink coffee, get married, or choose one career over another.

At that point, I'm left wondering whether the distinction between a deist and an atheist matters very much in practice.

Not because the two positions are philosophically identical. They aren't.

One affirms the existence of a creator, while the other doesn't hold that belief.

But if neither person believes that God is providing instructions or intervening in their life, their approaches to everyday decisions might look remarkably similar.

And that brings me back to peanut butter.

Finding a Substitute for Something You Don't Miss

One of the things I've been thinking about is how differently people react when something that once occupied an important place in their lives is no longer there.

Some people seem perfectly comfortable letting it go. Others feel compelled to find something that fills the same role.

There are people with peanut allergies who really want to eat peanuts.

For them, the allergy prevents them from enjoying something they genuinely desire. Some even pursue medically supervised treatments intended to reduce their sensitivity and lower the risk of severe reactions.

They want to be able to eat peanut products, and they're willing to put in the effort to make that possibility safer.

I can understand that.

But I'm not one of those people.

I don't particularly want peanut butter. Even if my allergy disappeared tomorrow, I doubt I'd start eating it.

I haven't spent my life wanting something I couldn't have. I've simply lived without it.

And I sometimes wonder whether people approach religion in a similar way.

When someone loses faith in a particular religion, that doesn't necessarily mean they lose their desire to believe in God.

They might reject their church's teachings while still wanting the comfort of believing that someone created the universe.

They may no longer accept prophets or scriptures, but still feel that there must be something out there.

For some, deism or a more general spiritual outlook provides a way to preserve that belief without accepting the claims of organized religion.

And I think that's understandable.

But I also wonder whether, for some people, these positions become a way of avoiding the possibility that there might not be a god at all.

Maybe it's difficult to admit, even to themselves, that they no longer have a reason to believe.

Maybe the idea of a universe without a creator feels uncomfortable, so they hold on to the smallest version of God they can imagine.

Not a god who performs miracles or speaks through prophets. Not a god who hands down commandments or demands worship.

Just something that started everything.

Of course, I don't think that's a fair description of every deist or spiritually minded person. People can arrive at those positions through genuine philosophical conviction, and I'm not in a position to tell someone why they believe what they believe.

But I do think it's worth asking ourselves whether we're holding on to an idea because we have good reasons to believe it, or because we're uncomfortable imagining life without it.

Particularly when that idea doesn't seem to make much difference in how we actually live.

Sometimes I wonder whether the search for a less demanding version of God comes from the assumption that there must be something to replace religion.

Something to fill the empty space.

And my response to that is pretty much the same response I've been giving people about peanut butter my entire life.

I don't need a substitute.

Religion Doesn't Have to Leave a Hole

I think there's an assumption among some religious people that losing religion must leave a person with some kind of emptiness.

And I understand where that assumption comes from.

If religion provides your sense of purpose, your moral framework, your community, and your understanding of what happens after death, then losing it might feel like losing practically everything.

For someone in that position, rebuilding their life without religion could be extremely difficult.

I'm not trying to minimize that experience.

Leaving Mormonism certainly changed how I understood myself and the world around me. There were beliefs I had to reconsider and assumptions I'd carried for years that no longer made sense to me.

But there's a difference between having to reevaluate your worldview and needing to replace God with something else.

I don't wake up every morning wondering what I'm going to believe in instead of Mormonism.

I don't feel compelled to find a new church, a new religious identity, or a different kind of supernatural being to give my life meaning.

I'm perfectly capable of having goals, enjoying relationships, making moral decisions, and appreciating the world without attaching any of those things to a god.

And I don't think I'm accomplishing something particularly extraordinary by doing that.

I'm simply living.

When you stop organizing your life around religion, you don't necessarily spend the rest of your life trying to compensate for its absence.

Sometimes you just stop thinking about it in the same way.

You have other things to do.

Other things to care about.

And eventually, what once seemed like an enormous part of your existence can become something you rarely consider at all.

Not because you're trying to suppress it, but because it no longer serves the same purpose.

Maybe the Cat Has It Figured Out

Earlier today, I saw a video suggesting that cats might be some of the best philosophers around.

The argument was that cats simply exist.

They eat when they're hungry, sleep when they're tired, explore things that interest them, and generally seem content to experience life as it happens.

They don't appear to sit around worrying about their eventual deaths or struggling to understand the purpose of their existence.

Obviously, we can't know exactly what a cat experiences or understands about mortality. And I doubt anyone is seriously suggesting that cats have developed some sophisticated philosophical position.

But I liked the general thought.

We've recently been getting a stray cat named Sunny accustomed to living with us, and watching an animal settle into a new environment can be a reminder of how uncomplicated certain aspects of life can be.

He doesn't need to develop a theory about why the universe exists before he can enjoy a warm place to sleep.

He doesn't need to understand the ultimate purpose of life to appreciate being fed or having someone scratch behind his ears.

He just lives.

Humans don't have quite that luxury.

We know we're going to die. We know the people we love are going to die. We worry about the future, question our decisions, and spend a tremendous amount of time trying to make sense of our existence.

And because those questions can be uncomfortable, we develop philosophies, religions, and entire systems of belief that attempt to answer them.

There's nothing inherently wrong with asking those questions. Curiosity is part of what makes being human such a remarkable experience.

But I think we sometimes make life more difficult by assuming that everyone needs the same answers.

Or that everyone needs answers at all.

A religious person might find tremendous comfort in believing that God has a plan for them. Someone else might find comfort in believing that a creator exists but doesn't interfere with the natural world.

And someone like me might be perfectly comfortable saying that I don't know whether anything created the universe, and I don't see a reason to organize my life around the possibility.

We don't all experience the same absence.

For one person, a life without God might sound lonely, frightening, or meaningless.

For someone else, it might feel perfectly ordinary.

I don't begrudge people their beliefs, and I understand that religion can give people things they genuinely value. But I also think it's worth recognizing that those of us who live without religion aren't necessarily walking around with some God-shaped hole in our lives.

We aren't all searching for a replacement.

We aren't all trying to prove something.

Some of us are just living our lives, making decisions, enjoying the people around us, and doing our best with the time we have.

And every once in a while, someone asks us how we manage to do all that without God.

I suppose the simplest answer is that we don't spend much time thinking about how to do it without God.

We just do it.

It's a little like asking me how I manage to enjoy a sandwich without peanut butter.

I've never needed it in the first place.