What Does God Mean to Me?
Added: March 8, 2006

Originally posted on NYRA forums on September 30, 2004.

*takes deep breath*

We should all abandon this childishness of theism and decide there is no higher being, no reason for anything, and, while we're at it, let's ridicule the people who do believe in this God. If this God exists, where's my proof? Show me God exists! I'm an atheist now, and if you don't prove it to me, you're just an idiot following fairy tales about dividing seas and virgin births. Why should I believe the ambiguous ravings of some unknown prophets in some old, very fictional book? I'm smarter than you because I don't follow such nonsense. There is nothing after death. No souls. No higher purposes or spiritual rewards. No karma. No reason I couldn't steal from anyone or kill anyone I don't like. If the police don't catch me, hey, I'm fine! Nothing will happen to me. Those religious idiots use this evil talk to sway me around, but I'm not buying it. No way.

Hmmm...

Come to think of it, as an atheist, what possible reason could I have of bringing others into this belief? Why do I care one way or another if someone believes in God? Does it affect me? Instead, atheism seems to be completely devoid of spirituality and meaning, and it really isn't all that fulfilling and certainly not uplifting. Dark. Depressing. Believing in God and following Christianity promises a lot of nice things in exchange for being good. It's nice to know there's a higher being, actually, that, in a way, we're not just all alone here but there is some subtle guidance here and there. Bad things happen, but with God, you know there's a perfectly good reason. Faith gets tested, that's for sure. You hate God sometimes for letting horrible things happen to you, but, just like Job, you've got to keep your faith and soon enough it will all get better again. God, or at least the belief in Him, can keep you going even when everything has turned to shit. He's planning something. Ooh! What's He going to do next? Other times, He just seems to mess with you. Who says a deity can't have fun sometimes? How do you know God is somehow interacting with you? Because you know. It's not so much whether you recognize Him or not, because you will. It's whether or not you choose to ignore Him. Miracles occur all the time, whether or not they're readily noticeable. Look at Moses parting the Red Sea. There are some Russian scientists trying to say there's a perfectly logical reason the sea parted. Well, okay. Does God not exist then? Of course not! Look at the fact that, regardless of how it parted, it parted right when the Israelites had to get the hell out of Egypt. Look at the World Trade Center employee who caught a nasty cold the night of September 10, 2001, and had to miss work the next day. Look at a Jew hiding from the Nazis who happened to find a hiding place the Nazis completely overlooked. Look at the girls who heard a strange noise outside their house, stepped outside to investigate, and just after they left the house it exploded because some idiot dumped combustible materials down their drains (I sort of knew a family this happened to). It's not always that obvious, and usually isn't very obvious to more than a couple of people if not just one person. You could argue all of this was actually just lucky chance, and that may be true, but you could also argue that God controls lucky chance. He may make you go to the slot machine that will pay out the jackpot on the next coin. He may act through the creditor who decides to call off your debt or at least give you some more time to pay it up. A more classic example, He may act through the girl who decides to give the other half of her sandwich to the homeless man on the street who would otherwise not eat at all that day. Ever notice how good you feel after an act of kindness? That's how you know you did something right. Just like how rotten you feel when you're nasty to someone. That's how you know you did something wrong. Doing nothing at all can go either way, depends on the situation. There's also forgiveness. It feels great to forgive someone. Holding a grudge wastes so much energy. If you're sorry for what you've done if you've done something wrong, God will forgive and you're again on your way to a heavenly afterlife. Here it gets tricky. What are heaven and hell? Let's call them two hypothetical post-mortem planes. How they differ is a mystery. Is heaven an amusement park you get to go to and hell is a cage just outside where you have to watch others have fun for all eternity? Are heaven and hell both the amusement park, but only "heaven" is the most fun roller coaster in the place? Or are heaven and hell the same, that when you die, St. Peter lets you in saying "oh, come on, everyone in, you all gave it the old college try." Then there's the notion that heaven and hell do not exist and there is nothing after death or perhaps reincarnation. Maybe whatever happens in the afterlife is just whatever you expect during life. You expect to go to heaven, you'll go to heaven. You expect to spend eternity inside a gigantic mushroom with a talking squirrel, you got it. You expect nothing, nothingness forever for you. If you want to be reincarnated, you will. Take your pick, each option is as possible as the last. As far as we know, God says we get to go to heaven if we're good and hell if we're not. The Bible may be hard to rely on at times, but there are some pretty decent guidelines for "good". Take your pick which book(s) and/or testament(s). Seems pretty free-for-all. Some rules are a little hard to follow and at best ambiguous, but let's look at Jesus. Love thy neighbor, He said. Judge not lest ye be judged. Love thy God. He who is without sin shall cast the first stone. There are also rules against murder, infidelity, dishonesty, theft, and a few other tidbits. All in all, it's a pretty nice way to live, even if the rewards are beyond a conceivable future. There are other rewards, like the aforementioned good feelings when you make a right choice, and there may well be plenty of right choices. A married man denying an affair with another woman. A boy who steals his father's watch but then returns it of his own accord with an apology. A girl deciding against abortion, bears a healthy baby she loves with all her heart, works hard to support herself and the child, and many years later when he's grown and getting married and having children of his own, she realizes just how wonderfully he turned out, how it was all worth it. How about the guy who gets so very angry with someone that he gets as far as planning the disposal of this person's body and is hiding in the bushes with a knife, and, suddenly, realizes he could never go through with taking the life of a fellow human. I don't care if this all sounds really corny! It's not afterlife, but you feel good right then for a deed or lack thereof. Truth is, no, we don't know what happens after death. All we know is that we will die, and it doesn't hurt to die a good person. Nor does it hurt to be a good person until then. Don't let the "unholy" actions of those around you deter you from your own salvation or whatever. All in all, there are some personal rewards and penalties to some of the things we do in our day to day lives. Are we making the right choices? Well, we can hope. If you honestly mean to make right choices, God knows that. It counts for you. And finally, for the atheists, a group I would never want to be one of, why not add some meaning to your life? Doesn't have to be Christianity. There's plenty of perfectly good religions that work about the same way. Buddhism is good, too. By the way, the simple question of "why not add some meaning to your life" by which I meant via faith in God, is pretty much the only "requirement" of encouraging others to join. None of that Crusades, Gulag school, fundamentalist, separatist, coercion bullshit. Just a simple "door's still open if you're interested" sort of thing. Anyway, returning to the point, even if you're so sure there are no post-life rewards or penalties or anything, isn't it so much nicer to have people who do decide against murder or theft, those who would for whatever reason rather take your insults light-heartedly instead of punching you in the face? Isn't it nicer to at least believe there is so much more to the universe than what we see, that there may be some underlying entity watching over everything kindly? If you choose to be "realistic" and decide the belief in a loving God is silly and stupid and that believers in God are inherently insane, that is your business and your right. But, I'll tell you!, I wouldn't want to be sane!

*steps off pulpit*


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