The word God here refers to the monotheistic judeo-christian God. Polytheistic religious systems should require a different article as far as I'm concerned.
Say what you will about evidence, belief in God is still a choice. The 2 major camps I see in this debates are the hard-core atheists who believe He definitely doesn't exist, and the fundamentalists, whose positions are well documented in various ancient works of fiction authored by many, edited by more and translated by even more. Neither side, in my opinion provide enough sound evidence to prove or disprove the existence of He, and I for one used to believe there was no point in arguing. Until now that is.
So belief in God is simply a choice between having faith in the book that has been in print since the dawn of time, or siding with existential allegorical arguments that make sense, but don't necessary disprove God's being here in the grand scheme of things.
If you were a fence sitter like I was, you probably don't care anymore. The arguments have become old and boring, lost their punch like a catchy pop song overplayed, and the so called "evidence"... well they were never really sound or real to begin with and require a great suspension of disbelief to be taken seriously. Like bad science-fiction, only set in the past.
The question of which side of the fence I should fall into has remained largely in the back of my head for quite some time. Being in the middle forever didn't seem like a good option, and being on either seemed to be contradictory to what I thought I believed. Here's how I arrived at my decision.
Faith, by definition, is believing without doubt. By having faith in God, we accept that everything that happens in our lives is an act of God. Good or bad, God has a plan. His plan shall not be changed, and in the end it all will be well, no matter how terrible it may seem now. God has a plan. Always have, always will and always have been. Adhere to the plan and ye shall be welcomed into His Kingdom Come with arms wide open. Disobey and suffer in Hell for eternity.
Staunch atheists on the other hand, believe a variety of things, and since there is no specific scripture or book I can reference, it's rather difficult to provide a broad generalization and hit everyone's definition. One thing Atheists can all agree on however is that there is no, or probably is no God. Nada, zilch, ditto. God does not run lives, he answers no prayers, there is no plan, no heaven and no hell. John Lennon famously invited us to imagine, and imagine these people did. They imagined a lot of things previously thought to be simple truths and facts of life out of their system.
Looking at it from the "what's happening in the world" point of view instead of the traditional "what happens after I die" point of view, the answer is pretty clear. My choices were, believe in the existence of God and accept that all the wars, suffering and bullshit going on in the world is the work of God, and have faith in his plan, therefore admitting to myself that God, should he exist is a twisted, evil, seriously disturbed individual who desperately needs help, and has NO business whatsoever trying to run a Universe in which our planet is smaller than the size of a pixel on my screen, or accept that there probably is no God (I cannot, with all the conviction in my heart, say he definitely doesn't exist) and all the terrible things happening in the world are a result of human doing and therefore admitting to myself that we human beings are the most revolting creatures ever to walk the earth. We might someday destroy for fuck's sake.
The problem with the former option is this. It really doesn't have any room for other interpretations (it wouldn't be called religion if it did) despite what many "religious" people have told me. The book's the book. It could be taken any number of ways but it probably wasn't written to be used that way. At best it's an outdated moral compass that proclaims it has the answer to the human condition, the recipe for salvation, at worst a mind-control tool. A very successful one at that. Guiness Book of World Records like.
Given the choice between Deity fallibility and human fallibility I happily chose the latter. The other kind is just too scary to think about. Given the choice, I'd rather not believe in God and than believe in him. Because if he were there, he's probably not doing his job, or not there. At all.
That's my argument. It's not much different from what has been said before, but at least I've said it. If you've humored me this long I thank you, this really wasn't for you, but please accept my thanks anyway. In this overcrowded, overloaded society that we live in, I really wonder what keeps me sane.
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