| Notes | Book |
As far as I know, I don't own a God.
I have no evidence that a God owns me. If a God owns me, she hasn't sent any notification.
So I am not really qualified to say “My God”. If this bothers you, you have my permission to stop reading.
Possibly because of my lack of Godliness, I am skeptical of other people's claims of relationships with powerful supernatural beings.
It does seem that if humans are the most intelligent beings in the universe, then the universe is truly hard up for intelligent inhabitants.
If more powerful beings exist where do they live? Do they care anything about humans? Are they particularly attracted to sitting on long wooden benches in rows, and singing and praying? Do they have a special liking for Pat Robertson or Billy Graham? I doubt it.
I am a person of little or no faith. I don't believe in belief. I don't believe Gods exist, and I don't believe they don't exist.
There are probably beings in the universe that are more together than we humans, but that is just a guess, or maybe just a hope. If such beings exist, and they are secretly controlling our world, then they can't be very competent, or our world would be much better managed. If super-beings exist, then they either don't know about us, don't care about us, or have an extremely weird sense of humor.
People may argue the existence or form of Gods, but few can deny the existence of churches. There are billions of people in the world who can say “My God” with a great deal of conviction. And they almost all seem to believe that their God or Gods are better than the other guy's Gods.
Is that an argument against monotheism? If there were really only one God, would she create a situation in which her worshipers fought and died to promote their vision of Godhood? Wouldn't it be easier just to create everyone so they just got along? The ways of Gods are said to be mysterious, but perhaps such secrecy only exists to hide Godly sadism or incompetence. Could a monotheistic God be as stupid and cruel as a human government? If she is, is she really a God?
If there is a single God who created war, famine, sickness, and environmental pollution, could her purpose be to use these tools to select the fittest specimens to inhabit her universe. Did God invent evolution?
Or did humans invent Gods? It would seem to be a short step from “My dad can beat up your dad.” to “My God can beat up your God.” Then there is the monotheistic position: “My God is real but your God is a figment of your imagination.”
Perhaps churches don't believe in evolution, but they are quite good at it. They have evolved to take advantage of every new technology that has been introduced from the printing press to the Internet. The evolutionary pressure on Churches is quite severe. They are born and they die according to their ability to make and keep converts.
Those who are critical of religion should realize that any system that seeks to replace religion must meet or exceed the standards of the formidable social technology that churches have been perfecting for several thousand years. It is possible to be skeptical about the existence of God and respect the formidable political power of churches.
History has shown that it is very difficult to change the religion of a culture by force. History has also shown that religions or systems of thought that offer a superior level of comfort to their devotees can sweep through a society in a very short period of time.