It was Nietzsche who said that if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. What you invariably see gazing back is a distorted reflection of yourself. Unfortunately, like Narcissus, we are prone to become fascinated by this reflection to the extent that too many people waste away their lives admiring it.
The abyss being, of course, the Universe, the howling wilderness of untrestrained creation which surrounds and passes through our own little corner of awareness. We can perceive less than .000000001% of it, and understand about .000001% of what we do perceive. That much any honest scientist, intellectual, philosopher or even Bear of Very Little Brain like myself should freely be able and willing to admit.
Our science, technology and philosophy are the weapons and walls we use to drive off and shut out the wilderness and the existential absurdity of our existence in it. Religion and philosophy arise from the same root - the urge to keep our thoughts and feelings protected and comfortable in the same way that science and technology serve our bodies.. Like science and technology, both are human constructs. But where science and technology are aimed externally -at the physical phenomena we are capable of perceiving, studying and manipulating - the other two are aimed internally, at our thoughts and feelings. But still with the aim of study and manipulation. Mostly of finding a way to make a being designed by evolution to live in mobile, spatially-separated communities fo around 200 individuals live comfortably in a static community of thousands if not millions. To run a bigger society, you need a bigger Boss (any Orc will tell you that), and God is, of course, the biggest Boss of all - the capo di tutti capi, the Big Enchilada, the Gaffers' Gaffer, the King of Kings. And like any other leader, he is essentially the creation of his followers. "If God did not exist, it would be necessaryto invent Him." Said Voltaire. Well, He doesn't, so we did!. We know that because, in our honest hearts, we understand that a God who created this Universe would be so utterly beyond our understanding that he would be completely unaware of and uninterested in us. We are too tiny, too insignificant, too alien.
I did not say God was evil, but that, like those who created him, he is capable of evil. In the Scriptures which too many millions still believe to be fact, God commits many acts of egregious evil. He's only human after all!
The Great Goodness you sense 'behind' everything is your own, it's 'behind' you and the way you try to live your life. That's a great burden to bear, so trying to shift it onto someone else, even someone imaginary, is natural, but ultimately unhelpful.
