Friday, January 7, 2011

The dichotomy of divine intervention..

If there is a god in this world, and there is such a thing as divine intervention (whereby god intervenes in order to protect his followers), then it is an absolute mystery as to which group god is protecting.  Good people meet unjustified deaths and tragedies at the same rate as bad people.  Natural disasters, war and the like, horrible deaths, losses and victories, are all pretty random and indiscriminate.  From this historical fact, where both the good and evil succeed and fail with or without religious views that coincide with your own, one can only reach two possible conclusions:  Either god doesn't exist, or no one has discovered the correct religion and way of worship.

Divine intervention is the only way to demonstrate god's existence and necessity.  So if god exists, let's assume divine intervention is possible.  The real problem one has to deal with as a believer is option two.  There are an infinite amount of possible gods and religions in this world, and no god is more or less likely to be correct than the next one.  The chances that humans have somehow stumbled on the correct god and way of worship are ludicrously against us.  The holy texts don't help, and I believe their short-comings are aptly demonstrated by how magnificently they fail to communicate a clear message, even to their respective followers.  We seem to have nothing but confirming evidence everywhere that either god doesn't exist, or we haven't found the correct religion and way to worship.  And if this weren't enough, in all the recorded instances of divine intervention, God notoriously and rather inconveniently, communicates through an human intermediary.  More likely however, is that human intermediary was crazy, wanted power, and either hallucinated the whole thing, or made it all up.  It could simply be the case that someone charismatic stumbled upon some good mushrooms and really believed they had an entire conversation with a supreme being.  But as always, there are few witnesses to these events outside their own experience.



If there is a god and he/she/it wanted us to know all about them, then don't you think it would be capable of communicating a clear message that also demonstrated their existence beyond a reasonable doubt?  I mean come on!  With that, I'll leave everyone with a few quotes:

"I will destroy human wisdom and discard their most brilliant ideas." - Corinthians 1:19

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away" - Philip K. Dick

"Deriving joy from a belief is not evidence that god is real" - Guy Harrison

"Saying a man of faith is more happy than an atheist, is no more to the point than saying a drunk man is happier than a sober man.  And I think it's a grave mistake to make this generalization.  There are happy and unhappy people in both camps.  It's part of being human."  - unknown

"Fear was the first thing on earth to make the gods."  - Lucretius

"Some mysteries of the universe may never be solved.  But this is ignorance not evidence [of the supernatural]" - Guy Harrison


0 comments: