On God, Part 2

 

95% of people born to Christian parents believe in the essential truths of the Christianity of their birth and heritage.  95% adherence to a significant body of beliefs would seem to suggest some real evidence for a faith's essential truths, until one reflects that 95% of people born to Muslim parents believe in the essential truths of the Muslim faith, 95% of people born to Hindu parents believe in the essential truths of the Hindu faith, etc. (for what it is worth, the 95% I assert I took from the crack between my nether cheeks; no doubt 95% is not accurate for all these faiths; but I would wager an unholy amount that it is not far from the mark).  This newer and broader perspective, namely that the young believe what they are taught, would seem to suggest that belief is not a matter of rational thought but a matter of chance and circumstance, credulousness, laziness,

Interestingly enough, the more liberal a belief set is the more likely it is to be dismissed by the newer generation.  Why?  Because tolerant belief-sets are inherently unbelievable?  No, rather they seem more likely to foster independent autonomous thought.

 

Many New Agers (intelligent post-modernists who, while they have given up on any particular faith's one God, do not have the intellectual fortitude to just forsake belief itself) believe that all religions really believe in the same one God.  But the history of religious schisms, wherein millions of men and women of good conscience have killed and died for their particular faiths, would seem to suggest that these New Agers are every bit as credulous as other true believers.  In simpler terms, the idea that one God was the daddy of all the world's religions' distinct one God is a merely another belief that flies in the face of all the evidence.

 

Let me be clear: I have no argument with a divinity of faith.  Indeed, it is the nature of faith that it is belief without (rational and natural) evidence.  Indeed, if there were rational physical evidence for the existence of a supreme being, if indeed there were "proof" of its existence, why then there would be no need for "faith"!  For example, you have faith that your spouse has not betrayed you, as you really don't have much choice unless you lock him or her up everyday, and it is a wise thing to do.  Without it, you have distrust and melancholy and despair.  Sometimes it is just better to be wrong than not to have faith.  So it is with faith in God: it may very well provide real benefits to you the believer, notwithstanding its actuality.

 

Look around you: everything you eat or drink, your shelter and your clothing, your means of transportation, indeed the fulfillment of all your material desires, love notwithstanding, are the products of rational thought, thinking that demands the proof of natural, physical evidence.  Our bodies' needs are attended to quite nicely, thank you, without the contributions of a benevolent God.

On the other hand, the denial of the reality of a supreme and supernatural being, one universal God, has not proved good for men's souls, independent of the material reality of such an organ.

 

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