To say that human thought reaches God and falls into frustration is, conversely, a confession that humans lack the capacity to accept facts as they are. When standing before the vast universe and the mysteries of the beginning, what we should face is not awe for some mysterious entity, but the “indifferent truth” itself—a reality devoid of intent or purpose. However, humans cannot endure this transparent fact, so they begin to overlay it with a massive cognitive distortion called “God.”
The Survival Instinct of an Ego That Rejects Facts
Facts, as they are, can be cruel. The universe has no interest in human well-being, and the primordial explosion possessed no moral orientation. The vastness we face is simply vastness, and within it, humanity is merely a trace created by a momentary coincidence. This is the “unvarnished fact.” However, the brain perceives this nihilism as a threat to survival.
This is where cognitive distortion occurs. Instead of accepting facts as they are, humans assign a narrative of “intent” to them. The moment we posit an intelligent being and call it “God,” cold physical laws are transformed into warm (or stern) providence. This is a sophisticated form of self-deception—distorting facts to preserve the ego’s sense of importance. The distortion that “God is testing me” is far more comforting for maintaining the self than the fact that “the universe is meaningless.”
The Wrong Answer Written in the Blank Space of Vastness
Christian “frustration” is not actually a “surrender to facts,” but a “capitulation to a religious frame.” It takes courage to say you don’t know what you don’t know. Yet, unable to endure that blank space, humans write in the wrong answer—”God”—and then shed tears of frustration as if it were the truth. If this is not ego-inflation, what is? The illusion that the vastness of the universe is connected to one’s own existence, the belief that a titanic power is waiting to “break” you—these are extensions of an infantile mindset that seeks to place humans at the center of the cosmos.
Ultimately, the cognitive distortion of failing to accept facts as facts keeps humanity in a state of perpetual religious infancy. We do not collapse because God exists; we hide behind the hallucination of God because we lack the mental fortitude to endure the nihilism that facts present.
Closing Thoughts
True intellectual maturity begins with removing the spectacles of cognitive distortion. When standing before the magnitude of the world, one does not need to summon God to soothe terror or assign meaning. To honestly stare at the massive fact of “the unknown” and to endure that desolate freedom—this is the highest dignity a human can show once ego-inflation has been stripped away.
Once we remove the forced logic named “God,” we finally see clearly: the world does not exist to frustrate us. The world simply exists. When we can behold that indifferent beauty without distortion, we finally become solitary individuals awakened from the illusion.
The Intellectual Property of Min Jin-sung
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