I'd like to state, in all humility, that there is no God.
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| ("Rosary on a Fluffy Pillow Surrounded by Pink Balloons No. 311" - Keith Adams, 2005) |
Hang on, before you get all up in arms, let me explain what I mean. Using the scientific method, we say, for example, that the earth goes round the sun; we say it's a scientific fact, but that's really just shorthand for saying that the current best theory holds that the earth goes round the sun. All scientific theories are subject to change given new data. All of a sudden, if we woke up one morning and found the sun going round the earth, not only would we have severe changes in climate that very morning, but the theory would now be broken. We'd have to come up with a new theory saying that the earth goes round the sun EXCEPT for... In other words, scientific theories are only as good as the observed data to date.
So when I say I know there is no God, it's just a statement of scientific fact in the same way I might say I know that when I drop my coffee cup onto the ground it will break. You might be surprised to know that quantum theory states that there is a tiny (yet finite) possibility that the broken copy cup might subsequently reassemble itself and rematerialize on top of your head. The probability of this happening is admittedly so small that you'd have to hang around for many times the life of the Universe to observe it, but it's there even so.
The same goes with God. There has never been a shred of proof of the existence of any God. Your own first-hand experience with God is subjective and cannot be shared with anybody else, so it proves nothing except that you're having, perhaps , a transcendent experience. And there is abundant evidence that people can experience transcendence without faith. The descriptions of miracles ascribed to prophets come to us second or third hand, at best. There is certainly no scientific evidence for God, nor have any miracles been indisputably caught on tape, even in this YouTube era.
You'll say that God isn't subject to scientific analysis. (Try telling that to the proponents of intelligent design.) Okay, that's a premise that you can't prove, so. I think then we both have to admit that your belief in God is based on faith. You're brought up in a culture which promulgates belief in this entity which we can't sense, yet which, in most established religions, is deeply involved in both our life and after-life. I'd say that since there is no evidence to demonstrate the existence of this entity, then the onus is on you to prove that believing in God merits consideration.
Put another way, if I say that the star Alpha Centauri is made of cheese, you'll say prove it. If I can't prove it, I might say "Ah, but can you disprove it!" The number of suppositions that fall into this category of being something that can neither be proved nor disproved vastly outnumbers the facts (or near certain facts, as proven scientifically) that we can prove; actually there is an infinity of such non-facts. So belief in any one of them (say a particular variant of the God artifact) has the same validity or non-validity as the belief that there's ten trillion pounds of cheddar cheese about five light years away masquerading as a star. For myself, I'd rather believe in the cheese; at least it's something we might be able to disprove one day.
It's so difficult for most people to step outside their whole cultural milieu to see, even if just for a second, how religious belief is something that's been superimposed on human society by the ceaseless advocacy of extreme thinkers and people of power. For instance, if I'd been born on a desert island, how likely is it that I'd have made up any existing religion? It's almost impossibly unlikely. The religions that succeed are those that take root in an environment most likely to feed and sustain them. They're superimposed by men.
I'm not arguing that you shouldn't believe in God; not at all. I don't look down on people who believe in God, and I am actually developing a curious affinity for both reading about spiritual belief systems, as well as empathy for religious people who put their faith to active use in doing good (so long as they're doing it from their heart and not out of fear of punishment in the after-life.) I'm just saying that when I say there is no God, I shouldn't be dismissed as being overly dogmatic. I'm merely stepping outside the Shibboleth otherwise known as the vast religious conspiracy and saying that my beliefs ares at least as logical as your saying you have faith there is a God.
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