Blaise Pascal said, “There is a god-shaped vacuum in everyone, which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator.”
Regardless of my great respect for Pascal, my point of view is a little bit different than his. While I believe that there is a vacuum inside every human being, I think literally nothing can fill it. But before any further comparison, let’s see why Pascal said God could fill it and why there is a void in the first place.
First, let me explain what exactly that void is. The void actually refers to our unending desire for more and a sense of dissatisfaction that we always carry within ourselves. We’ve all felt the disappointment of reaching a goal that wasn’t worth the cost, the sadness of happy moment and times when we realized they wouldn’t last forever, or when we lost interest in something that used to be funny. The true reason for our dissatisfaction is that our brain is always seeking for more in order to improve itself as much as possible. It is extremely beneficial for a creature to grow stronger, smarter, and generally better in order to increase his chances of survival. It is somehow encoded in the DNA of all living creatures to stay alive and make as many copies of their genes as possible. So, we can find roots of dissatisfaction in our biology.
The true reason why some philosophers or religious teachers advise us to fill this void with God is that accepting the concept of the Almighty prevents our brain from desiring more. Actually, they encourage us not to look for the origin of God or what he (or she) is made of. For those who believe in God, it is a win-win deal that solves two of their main problems at the same time.
But for atheists like me or those that don’t want to answer a question with another one, it’s a little difficult to find the proper answer for their void. In my pursuit of an answer, I find some truths that are hard to accept, but it’s the only solution that makes sense to me.
The void is a bug in our brain’s computer!
We are finite creatures with a finite number of brain neurons to calculate, learn, and make decisions. Because of our unsatisfying desire, we have some sense of concepts like infinity and eternity, but can we truly understand those concepts with our limited brain? My answer is a big NO!
Some mathematicians, like Pascal himself, have made some definitions for infinity, but they also accepted that infinity is something we can never reach. Examples could be like the limits of our universe’s dimensions. Imagine you have reached the farthest galaxy that James Webb’s telescope has detected; what if there are some billion galaxies beyond that? Or when you go back in time and discover that the big bang was not the beginning of timeline, but rather a minor explosion in a much larger universe!
The moment you convince yourself that the big bang was the beginning and there was nothing before that, you are just using Pascal’s method for filling the inner void and can find some sense of satisfaction. which is excellent if you can accept it, but I cannot.
My opinion is that we must approach this void consciously and carefully. We have that void inside us because we must always seek more and never stop improving ourselves. Ignoring that void (or filling it with the Pascal method) is going to make us somehow inactive and passive, but we must also be very careful not to throw our whole body in that void!
We’ve seen some people work tirelessly their entire lives to achieve lofty goals, often at the expense of hurting themselves or others or the environment. That is an example of throwing yourself into the void and losing the limited days of being alive. As we discussed, this void can never be filled by our limited capacity, tiny life span, and finite brain and body sizes. The void is not meant to be filled at all, but we have to find a way to live with it while also not leaving it in ignorance.
