News With Views
This essay is excerpted from the book by the author titled “The Living Compass of Kindness and Compassionate Love: Essays on Love, Beauty, and the Mystical Path.”
In the twenty-first century, two of the interconnected pillars of civilization have been called into question: marriage and family and the existence, relevance, and nature of God. Although many religious people around the world are holding firm to their long-held beliefs, an increasing number of people—especially young people—are challenging everything and abandoning the view that marriage and family were designed by an intelligent creator.
God Versus the Void
If there is no God, and humans somehow evolved from a black and loveless void that had no moral compass, then humans, by definition, are simply animals competing to survive. A void of nothingness can not give birth to a timeless and transcendent set of ethics. Since the ultimate source of humans would be the void, any human attempt to define ethical values could not be held up as anything more than opinion.
In that scenario, marriage has little meaning beyond biology and animalistic pleasure. Family has no meaning at all, and children become products to be used or discarded at will. Nothing has meaning because where would meaning come from? From the void? Thus, nothing matters, life is cheap, death is the end, and there’s really no reason to avoid acting in whatever fashion a person wishes.
