Is god a game of Twenty Questions?

An apophatic friend of mine claimed that “that religion might arise out of the fundamental enjoyment we feel at being alive and this leads to a sense of gratitude and obligation, and of course a desire to preserve our enjoyment, which all finds its expression in religious practices."

Well, actually not. Lots of other things might come out of "enjoyment of being alive" and being alive is not always an enjoyment, but let's not divagate. Religion doesn't come out from anything fundamental or natural. We are not hardwired for belief. Belief is a set of principles by some which choose to lead their lives. For some might seem it is natural as it shapes on their particular, subjective and personal views on life. The desire to preserve our "enjoyment" is more related to our basic instinctual innate will to biologically survive and thus perpetuate whatever we created and concocted. But it is not religion that motivates us to preserve that joy of being alive, it is our survival instinct. It is more basic than this.

The sense of gratitude and obligation is even more basic than this. A Good Samaritan is urged to perform acts of random kindness. Do we need religion to be good or feel gratitude and moral obligation? No. This assessment is totally wrong because it starts from the erroneous premises that religion is the only one that leads toward a moral behaviour. Morals usually define the goodness or badness of human action and character and are an intrinsic side of the human construction. People have or don’t have morals independently of their religious inclination. An atheist can be a fulfilled moral person the same way a religious person can have no morals whatsoever. There might not be a god centre in the brain and we might not be hard wired for religion, but we are definitely hard wired for good doing. This is how we survived as species, it is called compassion, which is independent of being religious or not. Sure, doing good might be a bit addictive: it is good for the health (helper’s high, diminishes stress, the benefits return, happy thoughts, affiliative connection). Religion is not natural, it is culturally learnt. So is god, which is not an innate concept. We have no god centre in the brain, heart, soul whatever. We are born tabula rasa, unacquainted with theism. An atheist can also be someone who wasn’t exposed to any deity concept and not necessarily someone who rejects its existence.
Atheism is also the absence of theistic belief without a conscious rejection of it. I do not believe in theistic innatism.

Allow me to exemplify: there is an Amazonian society called Pirahã which has no number words at all. The Pirahã uses hói to describe a small number of objects, hoíg to describe a slightly larger number, and baágiso for an even larger number. Basically, these words mean "around one," "some" and "many." For us, numbers seem natural therefore explaining the process of addition makes natural/logical sense. Trying to explain to these people addition when they don't have numbers, would be a bit difficult. However, we need to delimit here what we are talking about as the subject is a bit vague. We are talking god, religion, system of beliefs? And no, they are not the same. Can we be religious without a deity concept (apophatic)? Isn't a bit like loving without the object of love? Can we define love by saying it is not hate? Can we define god by saying it is not satan? Can we define philosophy by saying it is not psychology? Can we define goodness by saying it is not evilness? Can we mention by not mentioning? Can you say you are apophatic by saying you are not cataphatic? Can you say that something is by telling what it is not? Yes, if it is a game of Twenty Questions. Is god a game of Twenty Questions?

My friend went on and forwarded his definition of what beliefs are: not rational, not irrational but rather non-rational. His evident admiration for deconstruction’s pseudo gods like Levinas, Derrida, Vattimo made him declare that he had no idea what god was but this didn’t stop him from having a religious sensibility. Like his fellow predecessors, my friend practices a sort of terrorist obscurantism, which made him declare that if you didn’t agree with him, you simply missed his point.

I agree, the beliefs are totally non-rational as they are obtained through intuition rather than from reasoning or observation. Interesting enough, the word intuition comes from the Latin intueri which means to look inside, or to contemplate. This is what religion does (or it least should do): contemplate. But if this is what it does, then stop using it as a general value system of good and bad, as valid explanations for human life and behaviour, for explanations of our immediate environment or less immediate such as Cosmos, for the ultimate detainer of truth in regards to eschatology. It should definitely not impose beliefs or organize institution, or come with a reward/punishment system, or as dreams/hopes merchant. Just stay aside and contemplate. Does religion and its beliefs do that? The debate goes on as these are not easy questions….