FELLOW-ATHEISTS, LET'S ADMIT THAT GOD EXISTS !
I am not suggesting that we have been wrong all these years. But what if we tried to take seriously, for a moment, the opposition's arguments, to put ourselves in their moccasins, to see it their way for just as long as it takes me to compose this Reflection. Yes, I'm asking you to shelve temporarily your atheism, to accept for once that there is a Supreme omnipotent Intelligence, who just IS, who always was and always will be, who somehow and for whatever reason created, designed and engineered the Universe and everything in it, including you and me. We can skip all the arguments about "First Causes", "Intelligent Design" and assorted "proofs" of His existence. Let us accept, then, for the nonce, that God is a Given. It is He who made the Big Bang happen, He who made the Universe (or the Multiverse) develop and function according to laws He imposed, He who caused life to evolve at least on the planet we call Earth. He comes with the territory.
So here we are in our caves, our makeshift shelters, our houses, our villages, our cities. We are hunters, nomads, settlers, farmers, tradesmen, businessmen, engineers, teachers, politicians, rulers or subjects, citizens. Whatever our epoch, whatever our stage of development physically, intellectually or socially, we are human beings. We hear from people who seem to know more than we do, that we and everything around us were created by God. We have never seen Him, but are taught from childhood that He is to be adored, feared, placated, prayed to and even sometimes honored as the Giver of Life by our depriving others of theirs, in animal and even human sacrifice. His self-appointed ministers tell us what He, and they, expect us to do, how we should live our lives and why we should support them financially. Religion also comes with the territory.
The summary is severe but not necessarily inaccurate. It deserves a brief development.
Because primitive people took God for granted, they had no trouble imagining for themselves, and believing what fast-talking holy men who sometimes seemed to be gifted with supernatural powers or at least authority, told them. Believing in God was never separate from the expression of such faith in creed, cult and codes of conduct. But we can separate God from religion. We can at least imagine accepting that a God somewhere, somehow, created the world, without our necessarily translating that acceptance into religious practice. Many people today in fact do just that. They do not deny the existence of God, but do not see what difference it makes. And when they see so many believers doing weird things in the name of religion, they simply find it silly to follow suit. Even if God exists, they feel, it makes no sense to believe the nonsense, perform the ridiculous rites and follow the mad rules of religion. They see no point in praying to an obviously indifferent God, to praise Him, thank Him, or ask for His protection. They see no point in joining in symbolic, sometimes boring, sometimes splendid, rituals, listening to fantastic stories intended to inspire obedience, conformity, fear and hope, and accepting fantasies meant to provide a meaning for both their lives and their deaths. For them, God exists - but, they ask, so what ?
I am suggesting they would be right. You and I, dear fellow-atheist, are convinced that God does not exist. But even if He did, it wouldn't matter. We waste so much time and effort trying to share our conviction, analyzing and countering the claims of Theology, when it would be so much simpler to demonstrate that even if there were evidence for God's existence, there is absolutely none for His intervening in our affairs or revealing how we should lead our lives. Clearly, He could not care less. Any claim that God has spoken to us, answers prayers, works miracles, cures the sick or protects us from harm is patent superstition. It is given the respectable garments of religion, but it is as groundless as the hocus-pocus, the smoke and mirrors of the charlatans who have always succeeded in conning the credulous.
This is why I have decided to concentrate my attack on religion by demonstrating how absurd it is, rather than engaging in pointless, sterile arguments about the existence of God. Religious belief and practice are, I believe, so incredibly ridiculous as to make God irrelevant.
DESTROY RELIGION
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