Geo

GOD DOES EXIST!

How in the hell did this title get onto an atheist website?

Because God exists as an idea - a seductive, grandly appealing idea. Claims that God is alive, God is now, God is are all true. They are true as constructs of human imagination.

As atheists we must recognize that most of the world engages in what we think of as flights of fantasy, as false hope, and as wishful thinking. That is the way it is. Period. We can rant our objections. We can explain our reasoning. We as atheists can hope for more responsible and reasoning humans, but we are doomed to disappointment in the near term. We pride ourselves on looking at the evidence. Well, the evidence is clear, most people believe in what they want to believe and conveniently ignore the evidence that does not support their beliefs. They embrace and celebrate only the evidence that supports their beliefs.

Human beings are self-centered and self-glorifying. In order to explain what they can not explain with limited knowledge, they created a being that they could imbue with all these powers of wisdom and skill. God thus became all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful. God lacked nothing that human beings lacked. God became the great ideal of all that humans aspired to become, but always fell short of achieving.

Christians and other religionists claim that God created Man. They have the primary elements correct, but the relationship reversed. Man created God. Humans created God in the image of a man. God was created in the image of a man because that was all man knew of any being who had wisdom, power, imagination, and mastery over its environment. God became the model of what man hoped to become.

To simply create this incredible being was not enough. They also felt compelled to create a relationship with this wonderful and awesome being. They determined that they could communicate with God and thus they could share the powers of God. They could aspire to be godlike and at the same time be accepting of their failure to achieve this godlike status. They could live forever if they accepted God.

When events unfold that are consistent with prayers, God answers prayer. When subsequent events are not consistent with the prayer requests, it is not God’s will. Using this strategy, this system of assimilating evidence, God’s credibility will always prevail. His existence, his attention, and availability is always verified. He is always listening, but in his infinite wisdom may accept the prayer as worthy of a positive response and as part of His ultimate design or not. Regardless of the outcome, God exists and is listening! Praise the Lord! Hallalujah!

Just as the Roman and Greek Gods were imbued with human frailties, our ancient God creators offered the same for the Christian and Jewish God. He is a jealous God. He is a father. He demands respect even though He is clearly powerful enough to be indifferent to any form of adulation. So in spite of his often claimed perfection, he is not always perfect. Therefore, when His behavior is less than ideal, overly harsh, excessively brutal, without heart or compassion, He remains believable. In fact his vanity, his egotism, his cruelty, his indifference, his favoritism, his jealousy are acceptable. He is perfect, sorta.

We are all children of our time and place. If we grew up in a Christian culture, Christianity is part of our being, likewise for the children of a Jewish or Islamic culture. Even as atheists, whether we like it or not, our early culture is a part of our being. Notice the first sentence of this essay: “How the hell did this title get onto an atheist website?” Why does this question have more power than a simple question without “the hell”. Why does profanity provoke a stronger emotional response for most of us? It does so because it arouses those early-learned inhibitions that demand respect for God and all associated with Him.

Yes, God is an idea, a powerful idea that exists as a creation of human beings. If for nothing more it deserves to be capitalized. Eventually, the uppercase God will be demoted to a lowercase god. That time will be when reason reigns and the majority believe what evidence supports.

Revised 1/29/2008

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