I usually stay clear of this subject but, as I’m being open and honest
about everything in my life, I may as well give my thoughts on this matter
too. I hope this doesn’t offend any of
my small bunch of regular readers but I refuse to lie about or hide my thoughts
now.
To be blunt and completely honest, I don’t believe in God. I know that there are things out there that
science can’t answer as yet but I don’t believe that that necessarily opens the
door to the existence of an all-powerful creator deity. I’m of the opinion that there is nothing in
control of the Universe – no God, no universal mind, no all-embracing
intellect. I truly believe that the
entire edifice of the Universe is nothing more than an accident of random
events and mind-blowingly good fortune.
Chaos theory can equally explain the whole of creation as placing it all
in the hands of a deity.
Some might say that the monumentally precise set of circumstances that
led to the Earth being in the right place for life to evolve or that there was
just enough more particles of matter than anti-matter to create the Universe we
know or that gravity and a whole host of other necessary forces are at just the
right levels to keep the Universe as we know going are signs of some kind of
controlling entity. However, it is
surely just as plausible that the reason these circumstances are just right for
the Universe we live in is because there have been many attempts to create the
right circumstances that have failed until the right ones were found. Simply put, we may simply be the recipients of
a cartload of good fortune.
It may also be possible that we live in a multiverse filled with other
universes that are barren, lifeless places that didn’t have the good fortune
that this Universe has or that are filled with life that couldn’t live in our
Universe with its specific range of circumstances but are equally amazed at the
good fortune to have a universe that caters to their particular needs.
With that said, it may come as no surprise that I believe that God is
actually a construct of human need to make sense of the chaos that surrounds
us.
It must be a great comfort to people to attribute all the horrors and
tragedies of life on a deity’s plan for us all and that the reward at the end
of a tortured existence is an ever-lasting paradise for those who follow the
faith of the deity. It’s this woolly
thinking that allows people to keep going throughout all the bad times and also
allows the faithful to reconcile good things happening to bad people with the
idea that the bad people are getting good things now because they’ll be paying
for it in eternal purgatory whilst the good people who have lived with bad things
happening to them will be rewarded with an idyllic afterlife.
Don’t get me wrong here – I envy people with faith because they have
something to cling onto to get themselves through the darkness we are forced to
live in. I would dearly love to have
something warm and cosy to believe in but I’m also the kind of person who hates
the idea of being spoon-fed answers to the difficult questions in life or,
worse, not asking the hard questions in the first place. I’m also not so close-minded that I am
unwilling to accept the existence of a deity if the proof existed.
I think my greatest problem with the existence of a God are the religions
that have grown up around them. It seems
a little convenient that there are people who believe they actually speak for
God, that they are somehow in receipt of God’s wisdom and that they then pass
on that wisdom on God’s behalf. For me,
it seems a system that is open for so much abuse that it barely more than
charismatic person who misappropriates a deity for the purposes of personal
gain, which is then passed on from one person or set of people to the next to
keep the control of those people desperate to believe in something greater than
themselves.
If God truly existed, why does he/she/it allow such misappropriation of
their truth? I suppose that a religious
person would say that it is because God allows his children to have free will
but, if that’s the truth, where does that leave the idea of God having a plan
for all of us? Surely, if God has a plan
for each of us, that precludes the possibility of us having free will?
And look at the amount of conflicts that are caused directly by the
existence of multiple religions. Most
religions preach love but cause hate and death because of the conflicts between
the various religions in how love, peace and understanding should be achieved.
To take the Christian Holy Bible as an example, there are now so many
interpretations of the so-called Word of God that there are countless various
splinter religions all of one which claim to follow the Word of God but
disagree on how they do it. Surely, some
of these splinter religions are merely vehicles for charismatic people to bend
people to their way of thinking and to gain status as being the only person to
truly understand God’s wishes?
None of it really adds up for me.
I can’t believe in a God who builds a Universe but then deliberately
hides the reality of his/her/its existence so that there can be any doubt at
all. And I can’t believe that any person
or organisation can speak for a deity if one truly exists if there is no one
single interpretation.
For all the good that religion and faith can bring to a person’s life,
it can also bring death and conflict to whole swathes of the world’s population
and that just doesn’t sit right with me.
There are also a large number of religions, sub-religions and cults out
there claiming to be the one true faith so which one, if a God really exists, is
the true faith? It just seems like a
very complicated and messy business and there’s only one true origin of such
business and that’s the human race.
I leave you now with a joke from British stand-up comedian Andy Parsons
although I’ll have to paraphrase because I can’t remember the exact wording:
There are five main religions and that means that four of them have to
be wrong. On the day you die, you find
yourself in front of the five main Gods.
You’ve picked your God. You’re
happy with your God. How galling it
would be then when your God produces a piece of card with the word ‘Bluff’
written on it?
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