Oh My GOD
People have very different views when it comes to religion, and although I am going to explore my particular (skeptical) view, I do not want to upset anyone who may see things differently.
My question is, if God is all-knowing and all-good, then why would he make humans with the capacity to do evil? He must have known that humans would fall from grace; he must have known that the devil would trick Eve. Therefore, is God really all that knowing or all that good? Can one believe in God, or even the commonly accepted importance of “goodness”? Especially knowing that God made man, in his own image, yet partial to evil, aware that he would choose to side with Satan; therefore, unable or even unwilling to do anything about it?
Many people in modern society claim to be atheists, but are they? What about people who still firmly believe in God and His mysteries? Personally, I think that religion gives people a place in society. It makes them feel as if they have certainty in a frustratingly chaotic world. Religious people are often wonderful and intelligent people, but still I do not share their same faith. Here’s why:
Once upon a time, civilizations grew and people questioned why things occurred. Instead of endlessly being unfulfilled by inexplicable occurrences, creative people began to make up wonderful and exciting stories about all different kinds of gods. Over time these stories spread and changed according to the particular community’s interests and concerns.
As time passed, rulers learned to take advantage of these gods, likening themselves to the supernatural. This was all well and good, but it was a gamble, for if a drought or earthquake or other natural disaster occurred, the people would blame their ruler and question his supernatural ability. For this reason, many rulers supported the belief of one God in their kingdoms. This one God was chosen carefully, adapted to effectively become the embodiment of “Love”.
Love is a complicated thing, something that is difficult to define and even harder to put into practice. This was the perfect diversion. If the people were focused on loving themselves, one another, and this mystical figure that they deemed “the ultimate power,” then they would be completely distracted from their true natures to greedily fight for more, a greed that would only weaken the political stability of the state. Love is an ideal that, in harsh words, was used to make people gullible and soft, more focused on salvation than questioning their station of poverty. They became submissive to their higher-ups by living in a world of imagination and faith. In fact, in many monotheistic-religious practices, poverty was seen as a kind of blessing, a way of becoming closer to God. This way, the select few, often the ones running the religious institutions themselves, would be able to reap the riches that their followers renounced.
Was this then all a ruse to convince people that it was not power and survival that they really wanted?
Even now, in our society most people still belong to a religious sect. They may claim to be non-practicing, but many still believe in a God, or if they do not, still associate with a certain religious group for the sake of ancestral tradition, perhaps maybe even as a back-up, just in case the afterlife does in fact exist.
For those who truly have cut themselves off from the man upstairs, our modern society has created new ways of softening and distracting its people. As people grow more skeptical of the spirit world, those in power have used a new tactic to keep people satisfied with their current stations, by flooding the market with things that provide instant bodily pleasures. Society has become obsessed with sugary foods, plastic gadgets, and sexual gratification. These have become our replacement for God. They keep us dragging our way to the end of our menial job, day in and day out, holding society together in a kind of numbing machine that does its work, does its play, and dies. We often live in the belief that happiness is everything.
Yet are we happy? Or do we only believe that we are happy because we are told that we should be? Would we even find any greater fulfillment if we reject satisfaction and chase after power? Is there any point at all if there really is no God or afterlife? With God out of the picture, who is to say what is wrong or right? Our emotions? How can we trust emotions that are not fully our own, but ideals established in our minds by those in power?
How can we find meaning in anything? Should things have a meaning? Is pleasure the main goal in life, even if in order to achieve it we must offer up our independent minds? Or is it better to live in agony, but with the satisfaction of knowing that you are not living in an illusion?
As always, I don’t know.
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