#5: Do you believe in God?

A lot of people have been asking me about this lately. Actually, people have been asking me about this ever since I moved back to Provo. It surprises me how much it comes up, but it surprises me more how much people care.

Anyway, the answer to the question "do I believe in God" is yes, kind of.

Allow me to explain:

Since leaving the religion I was raised in (LDS), I haven't joined any other religion. I no longer consider myself a religious person or even a spiritual person for that matter. The only belief that I can claim technically isn't a spiritual or religious belief but rather an intellectual movement that started in the 17th & 18th centuries. Called Deism, it's the belief in a supreme being based on rational thought but not one who has any interaction with its creations. Some have called it the "Divine Watchmaker" god. He created the universe and everything in it but once he was finished, he let go and watched it "tick." You can read more about deism here. A lot of famous and prominent  people have subscribed to this idea including Napoleon Bonaparte, Marlon Brando, Benjamin Franklin, Victor Hugo, David Hume, Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Alexander Pope, Mark Twain, George Washington, and Voltaire.

This idea of a "hands-off" kind of god makes sense to me. I can't, for the life of me, claim to be an atheist or even an agnostic. In studying different theories on how the universe was created, there are simply too many variables that needed to be just so in order for the whole thing to work. For instance, as Bill Bryson puts it in his book A Short History of Nearly Everything:

"If the universe had formed just a tiny bit differently--if gravity were fractionally stronger or weaker, if the expansion had proceeded just a little more slowly or swiftly--then there might never have been stable elements to make you and me and the ground we stand on. Had gravity been a trifle stronger, the universe itself might have collapsed like a badly erected tend, without precisely the right values to give it the right dimensions and density and component parts. Had it been weaker, however, nothing would have coalesced. The universe would have remained forever a dull, scattered void." 

It just doesn't seem mathematically probable for that kind of precision to happen all by accident. I can't force myself to believe that it's all random, that there isn't some supreme being making sure that it all is just so. It's just too improbable.

However, my belief in a creator does not automatically mean I believe in an interactive God. To be completely honest, I do believe in a God but I do not believe he gives a shit about any of us. There is just too much pain and suffering in this world to believe God interacts with us. The pain and torture that mankind inflicts on itself, especially on children & others innocent of any wrong doing is incomprehensible and unbearable. If God really did care and really did interact with his creations, why is there still so much suffering? Yes, I understand the concept of free-will and people must face the consequences of their actions, but what about people who are the victims of someone else's bad choice who are completely innocent? How can any God justify abused children? How can he justify natural disasters or terrorist attacks? How can he justify letting me be born here in America where I live a pretty damn comfortable life while at the same time there is a 23-year-old woman in a war-torn country pregnant by a brutal rape with no hope for the future? I've heard arguments that it's just God's way of rewarding our faithfulness in the previous life. I'm sorry but I find that to be bullshit. It's God playing favorites, which doesn't seem like a very just thing to do. The only way I can rationally explain why God allows all of these horrible things to happen is he does not interact with anything in this world.

Now, do I stil believe in being moral. Of course I do, you shmuck. I still believe in justice. I still believe God is going to reward or punish you for the life you led on this planet. If you worked hard, did your best to find happiness, helped your fellow men, or, at the very least,  did everything you could to not make anyone else's life any shittier, I think God will reward you. If you went through life maliciously hurting others for your own personal gain, God's going to punish you. There has to be a point to this horrible mess we call life and I think it's to find happiness and help others. That's it. Pretty simple.

So to summarize everything just discussed:
Do I believe in God? Yes.
Do I believe he gives a shit about us? No.

Love you.
Mean it.