SPIRITUALITY WITHOUT GOD,

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE?

By

Aripin Tambunan

Introduction

Rejection on the existence of God has been began far before the seventeen century, but its intensity is felt in more stronger since seventeen century up today. This rejection can be seen from the following categories: First, the category of wickedness and suffering. Some people have refused the existence of God, because there is a wickedness and suffering in this world which is occurring in continuously. Usually they have the objection that it is same such as what Fyodor Dostoevsky questioned, that is: How it is possible for an all-powerful, all good God to permit suffering in the world? (Gould, 1985 : 489). B.C. Johson pointed out because there is a wickedness and suffering, and then, .... God cannot be all good and (by implication) that the God of traditional theism is incoherent’ (Law head, 2003: 106).

Second, the category of the freedom of human being. Believe on God hinders the freedom of human being. Because “It God has no existed there is all possible” thus Dostoevsky pointed out. Jean Paul Sartre Said, because the human being has the freedom, so the God should not be existed. If the God is existence, so, as the result, the human being has no the freedom. Why? Because the God has predestined the human being since from the beginning, so that human being has no the freedom or they cannot able to have the full sovereignty to determine their self. Such that, the human being can develop only their existences. (See Sartre, 1966: 559-711).

Third, the category of Science and Technology. Modern sciences refuse the existence of experience with the God. It can be seen when David Hume rejected the God. He has no believed the existence of God, because the God can not be proved in empirically or in experience way. Because, for him the source of knowledge is from an impression into idea and it is not its reversal. For example, when I see a bed in the room, it is an impression and when I have opened my eyes, then, in my head is exist and imagination about my bed room. It is the representative of my impression.

Similar to the God, He can not be proved with the impression of the human being. The God can not be sensed, seen and observed by the human being. Therefore, The God is not exist, cannot be proved. The human being can obtain the idea about Him. But, idea without impression is a falsehood and it is an illusion or imagination only. Hume pointed out, ‘thus when we affirm, that God is existent, we simply form the idea of such a being, as he is represented to us; nor is the existence, which we attribute to Him, conceived by a particular idea, which we join to the idea of His other qualities, and can again separate and distinguish from them’ (2003 : 65).

Fourth, the category of materialistic which viewed the world as materially, so that there is no a place for God in the universe. Buchner, a proponent of the materialism of Germany, pointed out, ‘That matter is the ultimate principle of life’; why he said such that, because a material or matter is eternal, he stated: ‘Both matter and energy cannot be destroyed, both have existed from the beginning of time. No God, then, is needed to explain the structure and the origin of the universe’ (Mayer, 1951: 492).

Fifth, category of God can only be postulated but His present cannot be demonstrated. Comte-Sponville[1] pointed out that the existence of God can be postulated only but cannot be demonstrated. His-present is the object of faith, it is not a science (rejection against the ontologic argumentation about the existence of God that had been conducted by Anselmus in eleven century) (Ibid., 93). That is why he believed that God is not existent, at least in this life (2007: 80). Why? Because he has no enough evident, whether the God is existent or not existent (Ibid., 86).