*the following post
contains religious views, reader discretion is advised
I spend a relatively
good amount of time on Yahoo Answers for a student who frequently stays up to
finish homework. And frankly, I have learned a lot about how
atheists/agnostics perceive God. The major themes that revolve around
the God figure are
- Man in the sky who directs
people's lives
- Merciless being who doesn't care
about his creation
- Scientifically unproven
superstition that only illogical people believe
People are entitled to their own
opinions and I respect them but I have my own opinions and I demand respect for
them. If we lived in a utopian world, I don’t think anybody would believe in
God. If everything happened perfectly, and we never struggled, we would not
contemplate about our lives.
The sun exists despite people who
claim it doesn't. Different people have different views of the sun, some people
close their eyes and ignore the sun, but they can’t ever change the reality of
the sun. I believe this is the same with the concept of God.
People fabricate their own gods, people believe in different types of gods, people
believe god doesn't exist, but the reality of God doesn't change.
Our location in space is just the
right place for us to be. The scientific argument says we evolved here because
our planet is the only planet to support life, but that is true only from a
human perspective. Humans cannot live without water, oxygen and vitamin D. Science
says we evolved from a single-cell organism into photosynthesizing plants, into
vertebrates, into fishes, into amphibians, and finally into mammals. Venus’s
atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, why didn’t photosynthesizing plants that
could endure high temperatures evolve there, and go through a complex
evolutionary process to finally arrive at a being equivalent to a human who
could maybe photosynthesize, or not be affected by high carbon dioxide levels
and temperatures?
Coincidences are miracles in
disguise. We are presented a vast amount of bounties yet we ignore them because
we use them regularly. We can start listing everything that science claims to
be the product of complete chance in our body and see how it cannot all be by
mere chance. For me, life in itself is a miracle. Modern technology envies our
heart, a machine that keeps working for decades. Fancy iPhones and brand new cars
only last a few years, and they require constant repair, while your heart
creates enough energy to drive a truck for 20 miles in one day, and in your
whole life, you could go to the moon and back with that energy. Our brain can
hold approximately a million gigabytes of information. That’s the same as
leaving the TV open for 300 years and absorbing everything on the screen. Our
stomach acids are strong enough to dissolve metal. Our noses can differentiate
between 50,000 different scents. Our eyelashes curl outward instead of inward
and don’t stab us in our eyes.
We have everything we have now, and
we can still say it has all happened by itself. How did the world originate in
the first place? The Big Bang Theory states that it all begun with an infinitesimally small
and hot singularity. The singularity exploded and now it is still expanding.
Where it came from and why it came, science cannot answer, and when science cannot
answer a question, humans do not delve into that topic too deeply. Mathematically,
everything happening by coincidence is impossible. Although, computer scientists
code programs to test probabilities, life isn’t a computer simulation.
I believe, because the world I live
in is too intricate to be the doing of a nonentity. There are of course popular questions I am
asked at school about my belief in God, and here are some answers I give:
"There is simply
too much bad in the world for me to believe in a higher power…"
Evil roots from humans. People credit
nature and chance for the existence of themselves and the world, but it must be
the doing of God if it is negative. If you don’t believe in him for the good
then don’t blame him for the bad.
"I pray and I pray,
but God doesn’t answer me."
Because God didn’t answer your prayer doesn’t
mean he doesn’t exist. You might be praying for something not beneficial for
yourself, and you might not be praying enough. God hears all prayers, but doesn’t
necessarily grant all your wishes. Plus, if all our prayers were answered, what
would be the point of living in this world? The whole purpose is to find God and
believe in him without seeing him, so we can be rewarded in the afterlife. When
we are tested at school, teachers don’t give us the answer sheets already filled
in with the right answers.
"If there is a God,
why did he let the Holocaust to happen? Why does he let people in Africa
starve?"
Why did humans let the Holocaust to
happen? 6 billion people on Earth, why do we still let wars take place? Why don’t
we act in the face of social injustice? Why are we by-standers? Why are we
lounging in our sofas, eating chips, watching movies while homeless shelters go
weeks without heating and proper meals? When we want an apple, does it
integrate right out of the thin air and materialize in our hands? No. The apple
grows on a tree, is picked by a worker, travels to a grocery store, and then we
buy it. The processes that bring the apple to us represent our role in the
society. If God rained down food and clothing in Africa, what would be the
point of us living? God is merciful, but his mercy is manifested through us.
Lots of roses
-Belle