Belief and Proof

I used to spend quite a lot of time on philosophy forums before I found this place. Every now and then, someone would create a thread outlining their argument for the existence of God. It is amazing how many untrained bedroom philosophers think that they have managed to do what so many “great” thinkers throughout history have never been able to do; prove the existence of God. Invariably, they merely provide proof of their own stupidity.

Whether it be because God does not exist, or he arranged it that way, I think it can be safely said by now that the existence of God is unproveable. That is quite a remarkable thing when you think about it: I cannot think of anything as prevalent as God without their being a shred of proper evidence for its existence. Of course, attempting to prove his non-existence is equally futile.

Now, belief in God is one thing, but some of the whacky beliefs about God are quite another. And it isn’t just God, I include his arch enemy, Satan, in this. Satan is just a metaphorical thing to some people; just a personification of a sort of “spirit of evil” that is the cause of all the World’s ills. That’s not too bad, although it isn’t the most sensible way of looking at our misfortunes. But things become much too bizarre not to protest when assertions of Satan’s physical worldly presence are being scattered all over the place. Especially when people are being urged to take some course of action in response.

Satan seems to come in various forms. He might appear looking like a very keen body builder, but with red skin and a pair of horns. He very often seems to turn up with a goat’s head. That has always struck me as a strange choice of identity on the part of the evil one. I know a bad-tempered goat can be hazardous to be around, but it is hardly the most effective image for evoking fear and respect.

Anyway, the good news is that there is a way to avoid the clutches of Satan. The bad news -yes, good news and bad news seem to be inseparable on these occasions- is that we somehow have to believe something that only an advanced crackpot could have any hope of believing. I don’t know the details in the small print, but if we will only believe a set of absurd notions about God, we will be swept up beyond Satan’s grasp, and it will be on a day that is always very imminent but never actually arrives. We will be raptured, to use the jargon. It sounds quite nice until you hear the terms and conditions.

Prophesies seem to be very much in vogue lately. It is a disgrace that we were warned of the coming of Donald Trump hundreds of years ago, yet we still let it happen. The trouble with prophecies is that they never seem to come to light until after something you can loosely attach to them has happened.

It is thought mean spirited by some people to criticize religious beliefs, and I agree to some extent. When the criticism is unprovoked and done with the sole intention of offending, I think it deserves condemning. But when criticism is not unprovoked, and is a response to claptrap that others have been posting, I think it is justified.