I was raised Catholic and we went to church mostly every Sunday, which we all hated. By the time I was about 12, I concluded that the whole God thing didn’t seem to fit in the world I experienced, although I had no more basis for not believing at that time than most people have for believing at any point in their lives. By that I mean most people believe simply because they’ve been told too, and that to critically think about what they are being told is the most direct way to end up in hell. Over the years I picked up information that supported my lack of belief, just as believer strive to find reasons to believe.
Bear in mind I have no distain for believers. I have my belief system and they have theirs- but logic prevails in my world.
The concept of a God or Gods evolved long before the current God of Christianity/Judaism/Islam. God evolved in the human mind to explain everything and anything we didn’t understand. Volcanic eruptions, lightning, storms, droughts, plagues etc were all beyond human understanding and therefor gods were evoked to provide an explanation. THese gods were worshipped in the hopes that they would not inflict these hardships on his believers. Eventually, this worship became organized- the more people who believed the more likely it is that the gods would spare them, I guess. Just as importantly, organized religion became a means of control of large groups of people. What better way to exert control than to threaten them with the wrathe of the gods.
I wonder who the first person was who figured out that the whole god thing wasn’t really true but learned to exploit people’s belief for their own betterment or enrichment? Organized religion is at its most basic a means to control people for the enrichment of the minority- very similar to politics and business.
My most fundamental problem arises from this old gods vs new god conundrum. If there is really one true god, why would he allow his greatest creation to believe in untrue gods for the vast majority of humanity’s existence here on earth? After all we’ve been here for 100,000 years, but he only revealed himself in the last 4 thousand (or less) years. This dooms all the previous billions of humans to hell, if my understanding is correct. How could a just god do such a thing?
There is an interesting article on the Nov. 6th Science magazine called “On the Origins of Religion”.
There is a very interesting book I recently read about a Somali woman’s journey from Muslim to atheist. It is hard to imagine going thru the hardships she endured. It is called “Infidel” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
I know- God works in mysterious ways and we should not question him.
There are plenty of other things that seems incompatible with a just, all powerful. all-knowing god that will be covered in other posts. Find peace in truth and progress in analysis.
