In some ways, a reality without God would be easier to deal with.
If matter is all there is, we at least know what we’re dealing with, even if it might sometimes seem bleak to think that all our loving and wanting are just the cumulative effect of otherwise random activity.
And if one allows for some kind of spirituality — whether a sort of collective consciousness orLife Force or Energy — one can at least feel like there’s some external — maybe even objective — meaningfulness to things. But even this doesn’t take away the idea of randomness, except one takes the Energy or Force to have a will of its own, or to be a Mind of sorts…
But then that already takes it, doesn’t it, from simply a Force to something more like a Person?
But the minute you take seriously the possibility that there is, out there, not just nothing or a Force, but an actual Person or Persons…
A ton of questions suddenly get thrown up.
What if this Person wants something? It’s possible, of course, that the Person has no concern or wants…but what if there are? Because the minute you bring in the possibility of wants and desires, then you’re up against the possibility that they may run counter to your own wants and desires, don’t you?
Even more problematic: what if this Person wants — like persons as we know them tend to — a relationship? What then? And what if we don’t want any such relationship? What then?
And there’s the question: what kind of Person is this, anyway? What kind of attributes should we expect? Good or bad? And what do those even mean for such a Person? And does this Person care about life being often such a mess and including such suffering and pain?
Also, what if this Person wants something? Oh, I asked that already. But you see how it just spirals from there.
Of course, if you think about it, all religions (or lack thereof) are really about different ways of answering these questions, even though it’s almost certain not every religious person really takes time to consider them.
And of course, some answers shut down further questions: if you don’t accept any reality outside matter, for instance, everything else is moot.
But once you do…what then?