The Cornerstone of Faith

The most compelling piece of evidence I would be able to produce against any "higher being", is the lack of any evidence to support the claim that there is a higher power. In fact, this is the cornerstone of “faith”; the ideal that to be a true believer…you must trust what you’ve been told without any reasonable reason to do so. Doing this guarantees you an eternal home in the sky, where you are given an everlasting body and reunited with loved ones. To not do so means that you will spend eternity burning in a world of sorrow, a place we refer to as Hell. My initial problem with this concept is the complete disassociation with our virtue here on Earth. A believer in Christianity is free to commit horrendous crimes, so long as he/she atones properly to God, and carries out the trivial punishment that a clergyman deems necessary (usually a set number of prayers.) In fact, if you’re a member of the Baptist church, you can skip this step entirely, because you’ve been forgiven simply for being a member of the correct and proper church. The reverse side of this principle is absolutely enraging. If you’re a good and moral person, who doesn’t believe in the correct higher power, you’re doomed to an eternity in Hell…regardless of your righteousness on Earth. 

If you’re a religious person you must seriously ponder this concept, not only because it is unjust, but because you must ask the one true God for your forgiveness. Given the amount of religions that have existed throughout the course of humanity, it is a statistic certainty that almost anyone who lived will be damned. Although this is a humbling and relevant point, it is not the one which I wish to address.

I wish to challenge that God is just and loving, on the basis of his hidden and secretive nature. If you can be convicted to an eternity of fire and suffering, for not believing in the one true deity- why would that deity remain completely hidden through the course of modern history? Why was there no intervention during the Holocaust? Why hasn’t God stopped the AIDS crisis in Africa? Why hasn’t there been any sign of God, at all, other than lore that was passed down through generations of scribes, and eventually placed in Iron Age texts? It would be so incredibly easy, if God simply announced his presence, no sane person on this planet would have the audacity to not believe it. If this higher power has the ability to create life, hear millions of simultaneous prayers, and to construct a universe that is perfectly suited to our sustainability- any announcement of his existence wouldn’t seem like much of a chore.

When you couple the hidden nature of God, with the punishment for not believing- you end up with circumstances that allow you to be inquisitive and skeptical, and a moral and just person…but not make the theoretical ”cut.” This is an injustice and could only be perpetrated by a cruel and vindictive being. Which, if you read the Christian manuscripts, is validated by the killing of innocent children and the validation of slavery. Walk into a church on any given Sunday, and you’re likely to hear great Bible stories that show Gods “love for all people” and his “fair and moral systems.” But, if you read the texts to support this, you find that there is more evidence to denounce these claims than there is to support them. A God who is just will judge you on the life that you’ve lived and the influence and effect that you’ve had on those around you, not on the circumstances that you were born into or the number of times you’ve praised him. 

If you’re going to purpose that God has made us as we are, than you must admit that our logic and skepticism were qualities that were deemed important. But to be skeptical and logical go against the notion that you should believe something which is not supported by any evidence (and certainly not where there exists evidence against.) Our rationality has carried us so far in the past 3 centuries, and we’re now explaining natural events that used to be seen as the work of a divine being. How would one explain the Sun, the Moon, or the cosmos without understanding Astronomy? How would be rationalize volcanos without knowing the geological principles that we now know to be true? It’s easy to understand where religion came from, and the crutch that it provided to the uninformed. But, now that we understand how these things are happening around us, isn’t it time to drop this superstitious nonsense that is setting us so far back?