Why would the creator of a trillion galaxies become angry if you have sex with your boyfriend or eat bacon for breakfast?

Originally submitted to the John Locke Essay Competition

Roughly fourteen billion years ago, matter burst into being in an expanding universe. One septillion stars radiate across this void, stretching in every direction. Some of those stars harbor planets. Some of those planets may hold life. But when we reflect on this cosmic immensity, it seems absurd that the creator of this concerns itself with us. Whether we fall in love, wage wars, paint portraits, or murder each other in cold blood. And yet, many religions claim that the architect of all this, God, is offended by dietary choices and premarital sex.

But perhaps the problem lies not with God, but with how humans conceive of God. The belief that cosmic intelligence is angered by mundane human choices and behaviors reflects not on divine will but represents evolved symbolic systems in which humans have internalized a sense of cosmic order, and in doing so, have become co-creators of moral meaning.

God, as understood in most major world religions, is a powerful, eternal presence. Yet each faith imbues God with traits and commands that reflect cultural priorities of its followers. Judaism describes God (YHWH) as just and covenantal, reflecting a history shaped by exile. Christianity builds on this, imagining God not only as a creator, but as love incarnate, a response to Roman-era questions of suffering. Islam, born from tribal, often lawless Arabia, portrays God (Allah) as merciful, just, and the sovereign creator of all things. Hinduism, shaped within a pluralistic and ancient Indian subcontinent, captures a more fluid conception; God is both Brahman, the formless, impersonal source of all being, yet also manifests in numerous deities like Vishnu or Shiva. In many Indigenous and animistic traditions, where life is closely tied to nature, the divine is not a distant overseer, but a force woven into nature, such as the Great Spirit of many Native American belief systems. Despite differences in form and language, across cultures, theologians and mystics from Maimonides and Aquinas to Al-Ghazali, Shankara, and Laozi, each in their own cultural and intellectual setting, encountered the same basic question: how can something so powerful and limitless care about human lives?

It seems unlikely that this divine creator, responsible for an unimaginably vast and ancient universe, would concern itself with the choices of human beings. When considering cosmic scale, the lives and actions of individuals appear insignificant, brief blips in a sea of time. In fact, it is rather anthropocentric to believe that it is humans that capture the attention of God. To believe that the creator of all things is preoccupied with our eating habits, clothing, or romantic decisions feels unreasonable. This belief seems more like a projection of human self-importance, a desire to place ourselves at the center of the universe.

Still, many religions claim God cares deeply. They not only teach that God notices us, but that He is deeply invested in the smallest details of our lives. Prohibitions on shellfish or premarital sex are often treated not as a custom, but as matters of divine will. From this perspective, even our most private behaviors can please or offend the creator of galaxies. This focus on divine concern is not frivolous however. Throughout history, religions have tied morality to the smallest of actions because, at a fundamental level, humans need order, meaning and structure. These codes not only give us purpose, but they strengthen cultural cohesion.

Proponents of an omniscient and omnipotent deity offer a counterpoint: if God is infinite in knowledge and presence, then he spans all scales. What many feel small to us, may not be small to a being who sees the whole of existence in a single, eternal moment. As Boethius argued, in his 6th century writing, God exists in an eternal “now,” unbound by temporal sequence. A being outside time and space would perceive all levels of reality equally, both fleeting thoughts and supernovae. In such a view, even our smallest actions would resonate with infinite significance.

Thus, it is not incoherent to say that God could care about both cosmic focus and human decisions. The more difficult question is whether He chooses to, and if so, what that care really looks like. Is divine concern just an expression of love? A demand for obedience? Or are we simply attributing cosmic meaning to actions that reflect, not divine interest, but our own?

If God does care, then we are left with a strange puzzle: why would a divine intelligence take issue with seemingly unimportant things? One answer is Divine Command Theory: the notion that right and wrong are determined solely by God’s will. In this view, moral truth is not found through reason or empathy, but in obedience. Consuming pork, for example, is wrong not because it harms others or because it serves a social purpose, but rather because a morally perfect being forbids it. This suggests that God’s will defines morality, and to follow it is not to understand, but to trust the voice beyond the veil. 

This leads to a classic philosophical problem: Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma. Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good? If the former, then morality seems to be arbitrary. God could just as easily declare murder or cruelty to be good. If the latter, then moral truths exist independently of God, implying that even the divine must submit to some higher standard. In the 11th century, Al-Ghazali, an influential Islamic theologian, embraced the first option. Arguing in The Incoherence of the Philosophers, that God’s commands define morality, even if we cannot understand His reasons. However, scholars like Kant, argue that morality must be rooted in reason, not divine law, meaning moral truths exist separate from God's will.

Either way, if we cannot comprehend the rationale behind divine law, then how can we be held accountable? A command without reason is indistinguishable from a taboo. Perhaps, then, such rules are better understood not through theology, but through anthropology.  

In Purity and Danger, anthropologist Mary Douglas argues that impurity in religious systems is often not about ethics, but about maintaining symbolic order. Forbidden things, like pork or shellfish, do not cause harm; they simply do not fit within a culturally defined system of what is “clean” and “proper.” She writes: “Uncleanness or dirt is that which must not be included if a pattern is to be maintained.” In this view, eating pork is not a sin in the modern moral sense, but a violation of structure. It is a breach in the pattern that sustains holiness.

This can be seen in many theological laws. In Jewish and Islamic traditions, the prohibition against pork serves as a religious boundary, marking those who follow these rules as part of a distinct group. But there is more to this prohibition than simply the idea of ritual purity. In the arid climate where these religions emerged, pig farming was costly and inefficient. Pigs require more water, are harder to manage in heat, and fare poorly in unsanitary conditions. What may have started as an economic concern has, over time, clothed itself in sacred meaning. Both the Qur’an’s prohibition of pork, as well as the Torah’s dietary restrictions, therefore, served not only to maintain a symbolic boundary of holiness but also to ensure that communities prosper.

The idea of social and environmental adaptation goes beyond just dietary restrictions. The taboo against premarital sex, or sex with multiple partners, has been codified in many religious and cultural systems. While it is often cloaked in moral language, these prohibitions also served critical social functions, particularly in agrarian societies. In such worlds, the family was more than a moral or emotional unit; it was a mechanism of survival, tied to land, inheritance, and labor. Lineage determined ownership, and certainty of paternity meant stability. Premarital sex posed a threat to this system by introducing the uncertainty of the child's paternity. Therefore, strict sexual conducts were not just about virtue, but mechanisms designed to maintain order in a highly structured, agrarian society.

Modern psychology reinforces this view. Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt has shown that our sense of right and wrong is not grounded purely in logic or harm, but also deeply rooted in emotion. In his Moral Foundations Theory, Haidt identifies purity and disgust as core psychological dimensions of morality. They often drive us to moralize what feels viscerally wrong, even when no one is hurt. But while the capacity for disgust is biologically shared, the specific objects of disgust vary widely across cultures. What is sacred in one society is profane in another. In Hindu tradition, the cow is sacred, and eating beef is unthinkable, while in the United States, a hamburger is a staple of backyard cookouts. In Torajan funerary customs, families keep the dead in their homes for months, a practice that would be viewed as unsettling or unhygienic in most Western societies. These differences arise because cultural narratives, religious teachings, and historical circumstances shape what a group comes to see as pure or defiled. A particular food, garment, or sexual act may be seen as morally charged, not because of universal ethical principles, but because of evolved intuitions about identity and group belonging. Purity norms, in this sense, are a tool of moral signaling. 

Still, for many people of faith, divine concern is not symbolic or metaphorical. It is personal. Their relationship with God is one in which every act, even the quietest whisper, is known. And if God is omniscient and eternal, perhaps this is true. But this brings up one last paradox: Can we be justly judged for breaking rules we cannot fully comprehend? Would it be fair for a parent to punish a child for violating a rule they were never equipped to understand? Such an expectation would be as unreasonable as asking a chimpanzee to sit at a dinner table, back straight, and eat with a fork and knife. 

More plausibly, the persistence of religious taboos, however arbitrary they may seem, reveals something profound: not necessarily about the nature of God, but about the nature of humanity. We are creatures who seek structure, hunger for meaning, and who long to believe that our lives matter. These taboos, whether about food or sex, likely began as responses to practical concerns: preserving social order, protecting scarce resources, or easing psychological anxieties. Over time however, those concerns were elevated into sacred codes. By weaving purity, reverence, and obedience into moral law, religions craft a world where our smallest acts feel cosmically significant.

In the end, the question is not whether the creator of a trillion galaxies is angered by bacon or sex. The real question is: why do we believe that He might be? Perhaps divine anger is not a celestial fact, but a human projection of our values, fears and our longing for order. Whether or not God exists, this conviction that our smallest actions matter reveals a timeless truth: we want to be known. We want to feel important. And we want to believe that, in some mysterious way, the universe watches.

Notes

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