Imagine there is God
by Murray Campbell:
Imagine there is no ultimate meaning, purpose or goal toward which our lives are headed.
Imagine there is no overarching design and no inherent significance.
Imagine if our lives were reduced to the pot luck outcome of billions of years of impersonal atoms and molecules running around hitting and missing, making and destroying.
Imagine a world where the reality of conscience and moral choice have no grounding in a purpose beyond that of group survival in the evolutionary race to the top.
Imagine human affections are ultimately an illusion, a cruel joke orchestrated by the impersonal rules pf physics.
Imagine all the people living for today, for tomorrow is the end.
Welcome to the world offered by John Lennon’s song, Imagine.
A group of celebrities have posted a new version of Imagine. The only reason this is going viral and being watched by millions of people is that these people are celebrities. Otherwise, the at sometimes tone-deaf warbles in the rendition of this average pop song would probably have attracted zero attention. Music criticism aside, the song itself is hardly a suitable anthem for a time like this, or for any time in the world history for that matter.
In contrast to Lennon’s nihilist proclamation, people want to know that there is hope beyond a crisis and that there is hope when faced with mortality. Times of economic uncertainty can drive people to the kinds of selfish and greedy hoarding of supplies that we have been witnessing. A health crisis can lead to further fragmentation in societies. Indeed, the longer this crisis continues the more likely we are going to witness the breaking of social cohesion. And yet as these economic, social and health pressures tighten, it is all the more necessary for people to hear news of hope.
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