DOES GOD EXIST ???
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DOES GOD EXISTS ???
Who Loves Ya, God Baby?
by Jen Frankel
In the end, maybe the central question about religion is not, "Does God exist?" but "WHO is it that believes He does?"
The concept of belief has always been a tricky one for me; I have always trusted my senses more than my intuitions. It's not that I lack imagination. My ability to tap into my creativity has always been one of my greatest pleasures. But I have never thought of the ephemeral as something I am perceiving, but as something I am conceiving instead.
If I'm a firm proponent of the notion that the human mind is capable in its complexity of overwhelmingly wonderful feats, I am completely comfortable as well with the idea that in order for an idea to have substance, I must create it with either my words or the labour of my own hands.
I believe, in other words, in the ability of people, me and everyone else, to create. It's more difficult for me to imagine that someone else created me.
God, to me, begins as an idea. Only when that idea is filtered through the belief that something without form can have its own independent existence can God exist.
It's an impossible leap for me to accept that something which has substance only in the mind or the "heart" -- whatever that truly means -- can be independent of myself.
But then, I also failed miserably to make the leap in mathematics between numbers as the representation of something that could be physically quantified and something entirely abstract. For me, numbers have a physical substance, and to treat them as ephemera goes beyond my capacity.
So maybe my inability to believe in God, or even see the need for the existence of such a being, has far more to do with who I am than the concept itself. I guess it might also be tied to my inability to succeed in pure maths...
But I have tried to understand, and to find in me a kernel of belief, of faith, that would explain to me what other people grasp instinctively.
Back in the days when I still attended church with my family, I was always full far more of questions than of faith. I was determined to understand what I was being asked to before signing on to even the mildest of dogmas, which the United Church certainly was.
But then, I had a basic stumbling-block -- that I couldn't for the life of me understand why anyone would WANT to believe in God.
I found the philosophical depth of the sermons intriguing. I was engaged by any moral or ethical teaching. But the idea of adding a supreme being to the mix, no matter how well-intentioned, seemed entirely superfluous.
For others, I know, the concept of a God, benevolent or otherwise, is so integral to their world view there is no question of questioning faith. It is essential, and inseparable, from life itself.
Leaving aside for a moment my own personal beliefs, or lack thereof, what interests me far more is not the belief itself but whether or not believers have something significant in common.
For example, I was suspicious of authority from a very early age, questioning and dissenting unless I was comfortable with
Is, in other words, God merely the concept we create to fill the void we find in ourselves when we grow up and our parents or teachers no longer are there to provide order in our lives?
I would be curious to see what if any correlation exists between belief in God and strong or even authoritarian figures in childhood.
I'm troubled, though, by the notion that we only do right -- or even know what right is -- because we have been handed a set of rules from on high. I'm even more disturbed to believe that the possibility of anyone behaves in a moral or ethical manner somehow rests on God's law, not the innate rightness of treating others well. How can you truly be good if you only do so when someone is looking over your shoulder?
What is the truth in your morality if you need fear of damnation or condemnation to motivate you to goodness? Or, equally, if you avoid doing "evil" or "sinning" in the hope of a reward? Basic parenting would tell you that's the way to create manipulative children, not mature, reasoning individuals.
I would be more sanguine about the beliefs of others if I didn't see the obvious correlation between religion and some of the most egregious acts of inhumanity. Anything that separates us from our common humanity is undesirable, as far as I'm concerned. For God to be used as a means to separate us from each other instead of form bridges of understanding and growth is destruction, not creation. I can't imagine, if God indeed exists, that He'd be particularly happy about the use made of Him.
Some of my wariness about the Divine is my firm adherence to Akham's Razor - that, all things being equal, the simplest answer is usually the correct one. Two caveats there, of course: "usually," and "all things being equal."If God exists, even in the absence of my ability to believe in Him, it will reflect most on me as unable to need Him the way others perhaps do, or because of a lack of what I've heard described as a "sense of the Divine."
For me, the wonder of the universe itself and its vastly complex interconnectedness is enough, my "simplest answer."
For you, it may not be.
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