Religion in the West is a dying concept. Even many Christians don’t seem to live their lives on the assumption that they will be accountable to a creator.
In fact, most people in Western society perceive life as like a till roll. An event happens, then another and so on until we run out of paper and drop dead. The till roll is not only a metaphor for life but for all existence. There’s a till-roll for civilisations, for mankind, the planet, the galaxy, etc. Each will eventually run out of paper and ceases to exist. In this interpretation of life there is no reason behind events except a vague notion of cause and effect and there is no purpose. There is, however, the notion of evolution. Evolution describes the progression of life from nothing to human beings. The evolution of the non-believer (and this includes many who purport to be religious), is a random process that has no real direction but came about through chance. A corresponding view is that ideas evolve, so in the same way as science has given us a better understanding of the world, we have evolved from ancient ideas that were in religious texts to new modern day thinking. In fact, in this way of thinking modern ideas trump old ones. The notion that people are male or female, ideas such as marriage, modesty, forbearance and religion are considered outdated notions that science has dismissed.
A different view is that life is like a Turkish carpet. A pattern that has to be viewed from outside to have any meaning. If an ant were to travel the length of the carpet from one end to the other, It would see the landscape of it’s view change but it would have no idea as to the pattern on the carpet. It’s too caught up in it to see the big picture. But the carpet has a pattern that may repeat in slightly different ways.
“There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns.
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself.
What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher. what we can’t understand we call nonsense. What we can’t read we call gibberish.
There is no free will.
There are no variables.”