I’ve finished school and don’t have a lot I have to do, so I figured I’d keep my writing abilities sharp with an essay on my personal opinions about God and religion. I encourage intelligent comments and rebuttals.
I have often described myself as an ‘agnostic atheist’, which at first glance may seem contradictory. I am fundamentally agnostic, and here’s my reasoning: if an all-powerful god did exist, he would have the power to make it appear as if he didn’t. Because of this, there can neither be conclusive proof of the existence of God, nor conclusive proof against it. The atheist term is used in the sense of ‘not believing in God’, rather than the strong atheism of ‘believing there is no God’.
That said, when considering the concept of God in traditional theologies (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, et cetera), I am effectively a strong atheist (”believing there is no God”). While there will always be the possibility that such a god does exist, I am prepared to rule it out just like I am prepared to say that a 747 piloted by Thom Yorke won’t land outside my house, and Radiohead won’t get out, greet me by name, and perform an impromptu concert which includes a performance of Let Down. Even though they aren’t touring (at time of writing), they consider air transport environmentally unsound, Thom Yorke isn’t a pilot (and even if he was he wouldn’t be able to get a 747 and land it on a small suburban street, which would no doubt cause much property damage), they don’t know me, and they rarely play Let Down live, there’s nothing fundamentally impossible about this scenario. Still, you can comfortably say that it’s not going to happen.
I’ve never felt that the idea of God helps us understand the world in any way. Using God as an explanation for things we cannot understand serves only to complicate matters. I do not think we could ever fully understand the circumstances of our existence: consider the universe—and by ‘the universe’ I mean absolutely everything. Either the universe has always existed, or the universe was at some point created from nothing. Those are the only two options, and both are completely illogical. Introducing the concept of God creating the universe doesn’t help: now we must explain how God came into being. Note that God cannot exist outside of the ‘universe’ that I am referring to. Regardless of the form, asserting that God exists means that, in some way, God actually does exist, and so the aforementioned dichotomy (either always existed or was created) applies.
Now, onto religion. Most religions are contradictory; you can’t adhere to both Christianity and Islam, for example. If, theoretically, one of these religions was completely true, the rest (or, vast majority) wouldn’t be. You can’t weigh up all the religions and logically pick the one that’s likely to be right, and few people try; most inherit their religion through their family or their (geographically) local community.
This might be a good time to mention Pascal’s Wager: to paraphrase, since you don’t lose anything if you’re wrong about believing in God, but you do lose everything (you miss out on or get the bad version of the afterlife) if you’re wrong about not believing in God, you should believe in God. This is argument is flawed in many ways: for example, God would notice if you were just hedging your bets rather than being a whole-hearted believer. The flaw that ties in with the above paragraph is that you have no idea which religion to subscribe to, and you might even incur more of God’s wrath by being an active member of the wrong religion as opposed to remaining neutral.
I have never been able to understand how the concept of an all-loving God is so widely accepted. Death and suffering exists all around us, yet most religions believe God can and does intervene in affairs on Earth and perform miracles. Yet, all recorded interventions are very minor things—turning water into wine is neat, sure, but what about ending famine? There are so many things God could do to actually reduce suffering, but he seems more concerned with tricks and illusions.
Heaven, in religions that have such a place, is supposed to be absolute perfection—eternal bliss. Why does a benevolent God then insist on having humanity suffer on Earth beforehand? The standard explanation is that God gave us the free will to make our own choices, be they good or bad. But, by definition, there is no suffering in heaven. For this to be the case, our free will must have been curtailed. This doesn’t add up, because our benevolent god must value free will very highly; after all, he has been prepared to accept the intense suffering and deaths of a vast number of people throughout history.
One may argue that the short time we spend on Earth pales in comparison to an eternity in heaven. I’ll accept this (although my calculator broke while trying to make an exact comparison), but this doesn’t change the fact that people do suffer on Earth and it doesn’t explain why an all-loving God would want this to happen.
So, let’s consider that. One argument is that we suffer as a punishment for our sins. In some cases, though, it’s hard to imagine what the sins could be. There’s nothing stopping me (except my personal morals and fear of mob justice) from murdering a newborn baby (even one conceived in wedlock, et cetera) which couldn’t have had the chance to commit any sins.
And then there’s the suffering that can’t be explained away by free will: that which is the result of natural causes, like earthquakes. One explanation is that this is just a side-effect of the regular laws of nature, and that the benefits which come from these laws being applied evenly outweighs the suffering caused.
A few times I have mentioned explanations that involve something ‘outweighing’ the suffering. I think these explanations can all be dismissed because an all-powerful, all-loving god shouldn’t be doing things in half measures and making compromises which still result in some suffering. An all-powerful god should have be able to create solutions which completely eliminate suffering–he is, after all, all-powerful–and an all-loving god wouldn’t want anything less, so none of these compromise explanations make sense.
In conclusion, I don’t feel like writing any more.
Since writing this, I did feel like writing more: A Little More On God and Oh No! More God.