The God Delusion - rebuttal

Hello world,

I have returned, as promised, to share more of my thoughts on why we should actually be relating to one another rather than being suspicious of our differences.  I’m looking to draw my inspiration from my daily encounters, musings, findings, or what I read either in the news or other blogs, etc.

Today I spotted a blog post in Fanbox entitled ‘The God Delusion’.  You may be surprised, but I can identify with what it has to say.  Before I became a Christian, I was there.  I really was.  The blurb for The God Delusion states that questions we cannot answer can only be answered by faith, about which the dictionary definition of faith is quoted as a ‘rejection of all logic’.  The implication here is that without logic or proof, religion cannot be.  Also, the same blurb says that religion ‘divides’.  So it’s clear this video is going to reject religion as being worthy of playing a part in modern society.

This mindset is totally something I have experienced myself.  Seeing division between religions, sects, even different dioceses, I once dismissed religion in general as ‘The Church of Intolerance’.  Well, there is clearly a lot of that around.  But I came to realise that, whilst I may have had a problem with religion, I certainly never had a problem believing in God.  So I have cast off my fears and become a part of my Christian community – and discovered more unity than division.  After all, at a local level, community matters, and good people matter in those communities.  No, good people don’t have to be religious people – some of my dearest friends are Atheists – but that just proves my point.  Goodness is a word which can bind so many of us together, regardless of our backgrounds and regardless of the apparent illogic of faith.

My dictionary says something a little different about faith though.  And it’s only a little pocket Collins.  Sure, whilst one definition is indeed a ‘belief without proof’, another definition is simply ‘religious belief’.  The two are separate definitions.  And who says one cannot ‘prove’ the existence of God?  It certainly isn’t possible to disprove Him, regardless of what name you give Him.  Those who know me best have seen my demonstration of how I can show the Universe to be, in fact, a mathematical impossibility.  It would take a miracle for such a Universe as that in which we reside to exist.  Now, you can explore the physics of it in minuscule detail, down to the first beginnings, which famed scientists like Stephen Hawking have done.  But the further back you go, there is always a point where you have to concede – what caused this?  If you are one who wishes to scoff at the followers of the world’s major religions for answering this question with faith, then try answering it yourself.

You can’t.  And that, again, is my point.  There are countless questions which we cannot answer.  We believe we do know the answers to them, and our faiths in those answers give us our identities, whether you put them down to religious causes or not.  But if you wish to avoid religion because it ‘divides’, do not cause yet more division by stating that God is a ‘delusion’.  I’m sure you can all see the paradox here!

Let us instead embrace these questions.  Let us answer them as best we can.  And let us all enjoy our faith in them.  And who knows...when we exchange our answers, we may find we discover more about how wondrous the world’s diversity can be, rather than labelling diversity as evil.

Thanks for listening...take care.