1 - Proof of existence
first things first.
how do we know if something exist ? how can we prove it ?
trough our senses.
we see, touch, smell, hear and taste what’s real. and sometimes we’re already pretty confused at that !
if i walked into a wall for example it would definitely prove its existence to me.
so how come nobody has ever sensed God ? it must not exist !
and as for the people that swear they actually felt God at some point in time in their life, i can only say that it has probably something to do with that amazing orgasm you once had.
2 - God is all
we’re told: God is all, God is everywhere, God is everything.
using simple mathematical logic, if God is everything, than everything is God.
but we already have a world for everything… it’s called “everything”.
3 - God is no good
we are told that God is good.
we are told that God is love.
God is the creator of a universe full of beauty, harmony and goodness.
morals and ethics of religions do preach believers to be thankful for this and … do good themselves.
logic would suggest though, that you can’t have a concept of beauty if you don’t know what ugliness is.
you wouldn’t know what doing good is, if you didn’t have the experience of the opposite.
so if God is love, God has to be hatred too.
so what good is God to us, if God is no good ?
4 - Gender discrimination (always a favourite amongst the ladies)
Ever wondered why God is almost always depicted as a man, or even an animal, while any female gender reference has been conspicuously left aside ?
the religious ministries officiating for God on earth seem always to be men too.
if God existed, why would God give all Its powers of representation only to men ?
wouldn’t it have been much more fun, colourful and delightfully controversial to legate Its worldly dealings to a more balanced selection of humans ?
aside from the obvious benefits of sharing both powers and burdens of religion between sexes; for one thing, churches, mosques, synagogues and temples would have looked much less austere, serious and pompous, and much more cosy and quaint, decorated with plants, flowers and joyous paintings, and drawn in a variety of gentle pastel colours, matching nail polish shades of the latest seasonal fashion.
5 - God is love ?
how on God given earth does it make any sense whatsoever, that God is infinite love and yet most of the ugliest atrocities of our history have been committed in Its name ?
innumerable acts of violence, terror, murder, wars and genocides throughout the ages have been perpetrated for the most basic of motives: “ my God is bigger than yours “.
sounds much more like hatred than love to me !
Paradise, Nirvana or Walhalla are all nice and dandy images of what you might achieve after death. if you behave…
in the meantime though, we should be thankful to God for enduring pain, fear, shame, sorrow and boredom, and getting killed if we stupidly happen to be on the side of the wrong God.
based on my experience, i just need to recall the meaning of love that God provided me in my early years, when i would walk into my primary school classroom, seat quietly at my desk and couldn’t help but stare at the crucifix above the blackboard, representing a dying man in atrocious pain, nailed to a plank, with thorns inflicting blood gushing holes in his head; while my teacher, a catholic priest well advanced in his 80s, deformed in his body and face by illnesses and jaundice, dressed in mourning black, waving a menacing stick and barking at me with a patronising tone, would tell me how i should live my life and be thankful for His Divine love.
6 - Geography
what are the chances that by merely being born in a place, you automatically achieve the status of being part of the “elected” people, chosen by the only one true God ?
i mean a girl born in Rome has all the luck in the world to be instantly catholic, named after a Saint and baptised, so she can be allowed to worship Jesus and have a remote but real chance of meeting her creator after death !
but wait … a boy born in Tel Aviv would surely grow to believe Jahvé is the only true God !
one born in Calcutta instead would very probably come to think he is the fortunate one, since the true God are actually his own hindus 3 !
not to mention another girl born in Somalia, who couldn’t believe her luck when she would have been sexuality excised and married by the age of 12 to a old lustful man, so she could spend the rest of her life locked in a house working as a slave, under proper Sharia laws, and could forever be thankful she’s pleasing the will of Allah the merciful !
honestly folks, chose well your next reincarnation site, cause if you happen to be reborn as a baby girl in Somalia… slim pickings !
7 - Mystery
so, apparently the world is approximately 13 billion years old.
life on this planet started around 4 billion years ago.
infinite number of creatures have been roaming the lands and swimming the waters, inasmuch as 99% of all animal species by now, have come and gone extinct.
Homo Sapiens appeared (only God knows how) onto earth 300’000 years ago.
experts calculate that about 110 billion humans have experienced a life here since the beginning of civilisation, 12’now 000 years ago.
generations upon generations of obviously ignorant and unworthy men and women have lived and died ever since.
so that … FINALLY some guy shows up out of nowhere and lets promptly everyone know that God exists, that He speaketh unto him, and He tells him that all of this immense show has been created and set up for YOU !
and if you have the uncourteous arrogance to ask why, in the name of God, would any of this make any sense, he would reply quite simply - AH ! it’s a mystery ! you just have to have faith !
8 - Faith
THE ULTIMATE ANSWER !
discussing the most difficult and unanswered questions about life and death with fervent believers is no walk in the park.
but, beyond the inexplicable meanders of cognitive dissonance, logic most of the times prevails over any arguments for the existence of God.
eventually, fuming of rage for being pushed back into their flawed and unstable trenches of religious identity, they would all end up pronouncing the Sacred Indisputable Magical Last Words - … but I have FAITH !
well, one can’t really argue with that. anybody is entitled to believe in whatever one choses after all.
question is: faith in what ? or more to the point, faith in whom ?
not in God Itself, since no-one has any idea of the existence of God coming into this world, making our first steps here and beginning to try to understand this reality.
clearly the notion of God of any believer is completely tainted by the image of the God presented to him by its surrounding circumstances.
If your parents are catholic for example, chances are Jesus will be your reference of faith in the future.
so what a believer has the ultimate faith in is … the parents and then eventually the teachers, the educators and religious ministers that tell you who and what God is.
so no faith in God directly, but faith in what you are told to have faith in. and in whom tells you to do so.
believe, honour and have blind faith in your parents.
yes ! the same people that told you that Santa Klaus exists !
9 - Holy Books
let’s get back to my catholic upbringing now and evaluate this particular meaning of faith:
standing on the pulpit above us, with a cane in his hand, our not so good old priest would preach for hours onto us children, compelling us to believe in Jesus, accept without doubt His mysterious ways, worship without fail His Divine authority and, of course, obey him, the priest, since he was His minister after all.
and all of this because… it’s all is written in a book !
apparently 2000 years ago 4 guys, that we know almost nothing about, apart from their strangely sounding english names of Luke, Matthew, Marc and John, wrote some story about another guy that lived about 100 years before them and that they never met. in Aramaic of course !
at that time, they weren’t the only ones. there were stories like theirs galore, circulating through the realm about Messiah, prophets and all sorts of Gods.
few hundreds years go buy and those writings pass from one hand to another, from one generation onto the next, in different regions of the Mediterranean sea, get lost in translation in arabic and latin and greek, loose a few chapters here and there, get modified at will and eventually fall into the hands of the roman emperor Constantin, who in the meantime has had a very tough time submitting the people of his immense empire into obedience.
looking for a brilliant idea on how to sedate the masses and clarify popular misconceptions that he was not actually the only God they should revere, Constantin decided to cut through the bullshit, organise a Council, create and impose a new religion, stating he was its ultimate authority and all of this based on the teachings and prophecies about that other guy that died 300 years before ! so he choses our good old 4 short stories about the guy (and plenty of other peripheral material), has them edited to his own preference and that of the most powerful religious figures of the time, calls them Gospels and makes them sacred.
and the only one true God was born (again !).
but wait, there’s more !
those instant best selling novels got of course translated again into our modern languages, with more editing and changes and literal interference from popes and kings for hundreds of years, finally to reach us as the perfect representation of the true Word of God and to convey word by word His precise message.
Bible, Quran, Torah, Gita Upanishads and Veda, Agamas, Kojiki… plenty of interesting material and ideas.
but why would we base our entire life on a story written by God knows who, hundreds of years ago that tells of the existence of God because… well, it’s in the book !
and all this time i thought you couldn’t even trust yesterday papers !
10 - Experiment
- and as for a personal final test of proof of His Divine Existence, i invite Him here and now to show me His infinite power and strike me down cold with a lightning bolt in punishment for my sinful misbelief !
…
nah !
…
still here.
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