No, Virginia, There Is No God

Here's what gets me.

Every December many newspapers resurrect an 1897 editorial from the old New York Sun in which Francis P. Church answered the famous question from 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon.

Perhaps Virginia is grown up enough now to ask a larger, more serious question: "Please tell me the truth: Is there a God?"

Virginia, forgive us. When you were young, adults thought you needed to be protected from your fears, and we believed it would be better if you continued to believe in Santa Claus, when all reason and logic told you there was no jolly old elf.

Remember, we cannot prove a negative hypothesis. We cannot logically prove that something does not exist. So, just as we cannot prove that Santa Claus does not exist, we cannot prove that God does not exist. But just as Santa Claus is a myth created for the comfort and joy of little children to give them hope against a cold, dark Christmas night, perhaps God is another myth created for the comfort of little bands of people to give them courage against a cold, dark unknown world.

No, Virginia, all deductions and reason tell us there is no God. We have grown old and wise enough now that in our hearts we know we can no longer lay the world's blames on someone else. We can recognize the heartbreak and tragedy that occur when something horrible or absurd results from someone acting in the name of God. Let's face reality: Mankind created God in our own image to do our bidding, and surely the world has suffered enough from all the wars and atrocities that have occurred because people believed they alone knew the meaning of God.

Not believe in God? Yes, we do face the danger of losing a reason to be kind and do good without a belief in God. But we can rely on intelligence and common sense in order to be kind and do good, not some ancient commandment on a tablet handed down through a self-proclaimed intermediary. We are no longer frightened savages huddled in caves around a fire, we are no longer children afraid of growing up and needing the comfort of the belief in something larger than ourselves, smarter than ourselves, more grandiose than ourselves.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" makes good sense, no matter who tells us to do it. "Do unto others exactly as they did unto you" is only a short-term correction of bad activity, and it can lead to less intelligent people killing themselves all off so that we are again left with a small band of frightened savages huddled in a cave around a fire, instead of a globe-filled, worldwide band of humanity loving and helping each other for our humanity, still staring at the stars in wonder.

If God does exist, why are there so many different religions and versions of God like so many Santa Clauses at every public mall? Would God be so vain, so human, to watch such widespread pain and suffering that occurs in the name of religion?

Why do some believe only they have the authority to speak for God? Be suspicious of anyone claiming to speak on behalf of God, because that means we are again being treated like children. But we are grown up now, and our parents are dead.

Yes, what about Heaven? Of course death is frightening. After the joy of life, the idea of absolute, spine-chilling, subzero nothing is frightening to us all. But a false hope of an afterlife is as perverse as the false hope of a jolly little man squeezing down our chimneys with good cheer and presents for us all.

And what about angels and that tunnel of light at death? Well, we know how powerful our own imaginations can be, we know how "real" our dreams can be. Perhaps our minds make us dream at the moment of death to help us through that last experience of all, and just as we sometimes dream about something we heard about, read about or actually experienced, our interrupted last dream could be as common as dreams of flying or being naked in a crowd.

No God! Yes, the idea is frightening. It means we are finally responsible for our own actions, our own destiny. But it also means we have that much more responsibility to be kind and to do good while we are here.

I rest my case.

Culberson's Challenge

Here's what gets me.

Rational thinkers need a corollary with which to counter Pascal's Wager, which essentially is "Either God exists or doesn't exist, but if so and I believe in God, I will go to Heaven instead of Hell after I die; if God doesn't exist, I have lost nothing."

That's not believing; that's just saying you believe.

By that reasoning, then you might as well follow the teachings of your chosen "God." Otherwise, you are admitting that your "God" is so weak as to be fooled by lip-service believers and lets anyone into Heaven just for half-hearted belief, not for good deeds. That's not a God. That's a bored security guard.

Blaise Pascal lived from 1623 to 1662 in France and was a brilliant scientist, mathematician, and writer who also invented a calculating machine at 18. In 1654 he had a "mystical experience" and converted to Jansenism, a doctrine of the sect of Roman Catholics in opposition to the Jesuits.

In other words, Pascal himself had doubts about what he had been taught as a Roman Catholic, and if that isn't enough to make his so-called "wager" suspect, consider that he also wrote "Men blaspheme what they do not know" and "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction," both in his Lettres Provinciales [1656-1657].

So, for all you people with such weak religious belief that you take the easy way out to literally "save your soul" or with such weak intelligence that you cannot decide for yourselves what to believe, here is Culberson's Challenge:

Assume there is no "God." Then, priests, cardinals, the Pope, preachers, ministers, and all other self-appointed spokespeople for "God" are either liars or deluded into ignoring the empirical evidence of science and mistakenly believing that God exists.

Either way, they are not to be trusted, and as the growing evidence of widespread sexual misconduct mounts, that would seem to be the case.

Now assume there is a God who created us and all the so-called reality around us: the planets, the solar system, the stars, the universe, and the "world." Then we are all merely figments of God's own imagination and therefore do not exist outside of that imagination.

However, if we are figments of God's imagination, if we are manufactured "real" creatures in God's own image, or if we are truly independent sentient beings with or without free will, what would eternity in either Heaven or Hell mean? We would eventually become used to our existence in either one and inured to the pain that supposedly awaits us in the one and bored in the other of those futures.

And name one other thing in nature that lasts forever without wearing out, running down, burning up, or simply dying.

Therefore, I propose that neither future of "eternity" is anything to aspire to, and consequently believing in the existence of "God" is of no benefit whatsoever while we are alive, just as not believing in Santa Claus when we were children didn't change whether we got Christmas presents from our parents.

Thus, I challenge you either to give up your belief in a supreme being who supposedly created you and controls you and the world, or else to continue your disbelief in such a mythology, because either way, you lose nothing.

Of course, there are some misguided fools who will not accept this challenge and say, "Better safe than sorry," which is merely religious belief by slogans and sayings.

This thinking is the basis for all religious belief, and it is the most dangerous aspect of believing in a "God," because it leads to this sort of logic:

"There must be a God, because everybody says there is. Therefore, I can lead my life believing in God and do anything I want to, because if I ever do anything that God doesn't want me to do, God will stop me. Therefore, I can do anything I want until God stops me, including trying to convince as many other people I can that God exists, because there is 'strength in numbers,' and the more people who believe in God increases the chances that God does exist."

If you accept my challenge and choose to live without a belief in God, your life on earth will be much less complicated and frustrating and stressful, and it will be much more rewarding, enjoyable, and definitely free of self-imposed religious pressure.

"God" loses. You win.

I rest my case.

Another Modest Proposal

Here's what gets me.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this abortion problem is a nasty business. Tempers have flared, curses have been shouted and people killed, not to mention both innocent and guilty bystanders swept by their emotions to commit unnatural acts in the name of decency and the "right thing to do"--and I'm just talking about outside the clinics.

Ever since Jan. 23, 1973, and the sexual peak of Baby Boomers everywhere, no solution proposed so far is going to satisfy everyone, because both sides currently have valid arguments. The pro-choice proponents believe that a woman has the right to do what she wants to her body and she can choose to prevent an unwanted child just as readily as she can choose to prevent an unwanted tumor, although certainly with more emotional involvement.

The pro-life proponents (or, by extension, the anti-choice people) believe that the "state," the government, society, other people or even God has the right if not the duty to do what it wants in order to prevent people from living a life of free will.

Hasn't anyone else recognized that this argument was angrily conducted centuries ago with great acrimony, hard feelings and probably lost lives and that therefore society is moving backwards?

Well, Ladies, Gentlemen and Others, I have a solution to the problem as plain as your own backyard or living-room easy chair: namely, our pets.

The idea came to me when I acquired a kitten from the Humane Society and afterwards watched a disgusting, predestination-disguised, anti-choice commercial that was crude in its production values, but just as slick in its manipulative techniques as any Madison Avenue, truth-mangling, morality-bending, self-aggrandizing advertisement.

When I bought the kitten, I was pressured into having it neutered. I was amazed that both the Humane Society and my veterinarian were so cavalier about a practice that is nothing more than a subversive act that eventually should put them both out of work.

Of course! Neither the Humane Society nor veterinarians would be so naive as to work toward putting themselves out of business, so something noble must be behind their desire to have a world full of aging, non-procreating pets.

And therein lies the solution to the problem of pro-choice, pro-life, anti-choice, anti-life, free-will, predestination, pro-abortion, anti-abortion dilemma: Whenever a child is born or whenever a child is adopted, neuter it. Snip-snip.

Only then can we cease this senseless anger, fighting, demonstrating and killing that is pitting sister against sister, brother against brother and family against family over a matter that should be between a woman and her conscience.

"What?" you say? "That would be silly!" you say? "Not to mention stupid and inhuman!" you say?

Not if we call it "humane." The time-honored tradition of society and Madison Avenue is to use language to sway thinking. Therefore, we simply call the act of desexing all children at birth and adoption the "Humane Solution," and all our worries about unwanted children, the agonizing of abortion and the morality of the way we live others' lives is over. Snip-snip.

"Wait a minute!" you say? "If all children are prevented from having children of their own, then how does that affect future generations?" you say?

Now, I don't want to sound callous or unfeeling, but another time-honored tradition of society and government is to answer "That's their problem." I am sure that pro-choice advocates, pro-life advocates and busybodies everywhere are more concerned with the immediate problem: how to prevent unwanted children and how to prevent women from destroying society by doing what they want to their own bodies.

Otherwise, we need only look at our own backyards and living-room easy chairs again. The practice and pressure of neutering our pets certainly hasn't created a shortage of pets. The unnatural but humane act of forcing our will upon the nature of pet procreation hasn't caused us any sleepless nights, and those pets are coming from somewhere.

Perhaps it's as simple as "Nature always finds a way."

Now, to head off any accusations that I have a personal interest in my proposal, I have no other motive than the public good of society by relieving the suffering of women, satisfying the desires of the religious and giving some short-term business to doctors. I have no children by which I can get a single penny, the youngest being 42 years old, and I am not a doctor nor do I play one on TV.

I rest my case.