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Posted 02.04.2013
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Teen
This is a teen-written article from our friends at Youth Communication, a nonprofit organization that helps marginalized youth develop their full pote...
Creationists, however, are perfectly happy to hold forth on a wide variety of subjects, including physics, biology, paleontology, genetics, anatomy and others. People study for years to become experts in any one of these disciplines, but this does not deter creationists in the slightest.
The best explanation for the existence of objective morality is that it is consciously built in to the process of creation itself.
Call this the logic of divine being. Now, this is no proof for God. But it does set up the terms within which conversation about God should take place.
But I still say that there is no technical proof that God exists, nor any proof that he doesn't exist. As we know from various religious people: just because you feel passionately about something, it doesn't mean you're right.
Self-declared atheists not only report getting angry at God, but report higher levels of anger than that experienced by believers. How does that work? Why bother being angry at something which one doesn't believe even exists?
No doubt the debates about the existence of God will continue, and we can enjoy the spectacle, but I suspect that no amount of clever verbal exchange will do anything to convince anyone either way.
Why wouldn't this creator, in order to silence disbelievers and recruit more faithful, simply appear on the White House lawn, announce his presence, and miraculously end all war, hunger, and disease?
Recent developments in science do make conclusions about God more difficult. But do they really render the God hypothesis superfluous?
Lose the Gods, heavens, angels, and miracles, and resurrect religion as an activity of connecting with that part of us that is not us but lives in us, or flows though us.
I'm not a believer. Sometimes, I wish I were. I envy the comfort and community believers share. Maher will have none of it. He derides the religious people's certainty as an adherence to a dogma entirely lacking in verifiable evidence.
Ever since I smoked my first good cigar, I have felt that if there were no other reason to believe in God, Havana leaf would suffice. I've had similar epiphanies while biting into a ripe peach.
"36 Arguments for the Existence of God" is an intriguingly structured work, tricky but also very traditional; a book that tries to make a serious argument but also tells a captivating story.
