I was having a discussion the other day with a friend who regards himself as an agnostic when it comes to belief in God. He finds it difficult to understand the purpose of life, but thinks there must be one, otherwise why are we here? My position is very different. I do not think there is any reason why we are here, under than by the accident of our birth. We were lucky to be born in the one planet in our galaxy that has the conditions which support life. That’s pretty well it for me, but I can understand why people still search for answers that are probably not there.
I use the word probably because no one can be sure, beyond reasonable doubt, that there is no God. I know that I can no more disprove the existence of fairies at the bottom of my garden than disprove the existence of God, but I would say that both are equally unlikely.
As a secularist as well as an atheist, I respect the rights of people to believe in whatever God they like as long as those beliefs do not interfere with the lives of those who believe in other Gods or no Gods at all. If people believe in Gods because it gives them comfort and hope that, for example, they might once again meet relatives and friends who have died, well, that’s fine. But there is no evidence to suggest that people do survive their own deaths and come back to life in some heaven or hell afterlife. I prefer to believe in what is true, but it takes all sorts.
I have met numerous members of the cloth throughout my life and, to a fault, they have uniformly been pleasant and polite. Most of them, though not all, have come across as educated and thoughtful human beings and the question I always ask myself is why do they believe in all this stuff? I do not pretend to be the sharpest tool in the box, but I cannot for the life of me understand why people have “faith” in something for which there is no evidence. It is not the cynic within me that makes me disbelieve these things: it is the realist.
Some people argue that without faith, from where would we gain our moral compass? Well, certainly not the bible where the God character is a bloodthirsty bully and tyrant. I don’t know why I don’t go round stealing from my neighbours other than I think it’s wrong. I don’t need some elderly man in a frock to tell me it’s wrong: I just know. I don’t need him to tell me not to commit adultery either or to not believe in the wrong God. Mind your own business.
Richard Dawkins put it better than I ever could when he said, “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
I don’t always understand the science that explains our world, but the faith I don’t have in religion, I do in science.
