Some of you will say that yes, it is real because ‘look around you, He made all this’ while others will wonder ‘what happened, I knew you were a cool-headed guy?’.

Well, first of all, I didn’t ask ‘Who created the world?’!
Just to set things straight, I don’t need a god to be at ease with how we came into existence.
On the other hand, I don’t know everything so I cannot rule out the possibility that somewhere, somehow, somebody started the whole process that had set the things in motion nor can I be absolutely certain that there is no ‘higher force/authority’ that operates the ‘control room’.  I do not see a plausible role for such a ‘higher instance’ but I cannot rule out its very existence.
(The main reason for why I don’t think it exists is that the moment I accept its existence a question pops up: “how did this ‘higher instance’ came into existence, what made it possible?” and this would bring me back to square one. But I repeat myself, I cannot rule out such a possibility, especially so if I consider the ‘chicken and egg’ conundrum: ‘What if the creator god and its very creation evolved simultaneously and symbiotically?’)

Enough with this metaphysical speculation and back to our more mundane question: ‘is God, as we know it, real or not?’

We kid ourselves for being rational beings. What would a rational person do when confronted with a problem? Try to ‘measure’ itself out of the whole situation, right? What else being rational means if not trying to discover the relations between things?
This way it would be relatively simple to determine if a particular thing exists or not: ‘Does it have any consequences?’.
If the answer is ‘yes’, then it is certain that that particular thing exists. If ‘not’ then we cannot give a definitive answer. (Please don’t fall for ‘if it doesn’t have any consequence it doesn’t exist’. This is a trap. Us not being aware of something doesn’t mean that that something doesn’t exist. ‘The absence of proof is not proof of absence!’)

So does God have any consequences?

‘This guy is nuts! First he tells us that he doesn’t believe God created us all and now he asks if God has any consequences. His discourse doesn’t have the least shred of consistency!’

Well… not so fast!

Why did the Ancient Egyptians build the pyramids?
Because the were convinced that that was the only way of preserving their pharaohs for the afterlife?
Why did the Ancient Greeks build and used their magnificent temples? Because they believed that was the proper thing to do?

Now can you tell me if AmonRa and Zeus existed or not? Only in the Ancient Egyptians’ and Ancient Greeks’ imaginations, respectively? Are you sure? The Pyramids and the Parthenon seem pretty real to me, even if I haven’t seen any of them ‘face to face’! So AmonRa and Zeus were, and in fact still are, real. At least in the sense that they both had, and still have, palpable consequences.

Same thing with ‘God’! Any of them. Monotheistic, polytheistic … it doesn’t matter. If somebody believes in any of them strongly enough to act upon that belief then each of those Gods suddenly springs into life. And sometimes there is belief even in absence of a God. What God do Buddhists believe in? Yet they are at least as steadfast in their beliefs as the rest of the religious people.

It seems that ‘belief’ is the actual connection between ‘God’ and reality. Human belief that is.

So please take care what you believe in and how you transpose your beliefs into the real world. The one in which we are going to spend the rest of our natural lives and the only one our children are going to inherit.

Advertisement