God and Immortality

Do Not Enter by Mistake if You Dislike This

God and immortality—understood respectively as “ultimate or unconditional certainty” and “some kind of infinity or eternity”—are deeply rooted, ineradicable desires and demands of the human intellect.

The unrestrained questing and questioning of human reason will ultimately and inevitably touch upon God and immortality—that is, it will touch upon the question of religion.

Quite contrary to the common understanding, indulging reason will lead to religion; if one wishes to shake off or keep religion at a distance, one must resort to the intervention of the irrational.

A moderate amount of irrationality and a moderate amount of rationality are both healthy for an individual. But for humanity as a whole, human intellect will never be able to extirpate religion.

God and immortality are eternal themes for human intellect to pursue and think about.

August 11, 2006

Latest Comments

• Wu Zheng Baobao

  2008-12-31 01:57:46 

  I’ve encountered this viewpoint before. In fact, it may well be so.
  Christian monotheism and its rejection of idolatry are precisely expressions, at the level of principle, of the special character of the concept of “God.” I think such a form obviously cannot be fully accepted by the masses, and so there are all sorts of songs, rituals, writings, and so on to proclaim goodness, divine grace, gratitude, and collectivity. Religion in the eyes of the masses, and in your eyes, are of course different “religions.”

  Well said. But in fact, talking about “religion” is not the same as talking about God or faith. “Religion” itself is something communal; people who have faith may not necessarily participate in religion. Besides providing faith, religion mainly consists of more external things such as culture, ritual, group identity, and the like.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.