The Search for God

I recently feel that I have done something wrong and am feeling immense guilt and pain for that wrongdoing. I am only recently, today, beginning the section in my Philosophy book entitled, “The Search For God.” One man submits that “The idea of God is either a fact, like sand, or a fantasy, like Santa…If it is a fantasy, a human invention, it is the greatest invention in all of human history.” Another portion of the section says, “Love and anger, guilt and ecstasy, humor and solemnity, optimism and cynicism, peace and doubt, hope and despair – religion seems capable of evoking a response corresponding to every peak and valley on the spectrum of human emotional life.” The way this statement put it, it seemed to imply that religion was the driving force behind these emotions; religion in and of itself; the belief in a higher being, but not necessarily the existence of one. This is hard for me to reconcile. I do not want to believe that a FALSE idea could evict such emotion in the thinker. If religion is an invention of man, then when man dies, that will probably be the end of it. There will come nothing afterwards. There will be no heaven, no afterlife, and no hell.

I think this is a comforting thought for some people, because it means no consequences for your actions. It means that when you die, you don’t go to everlasting joy or everlasting torment; you just…die. You no longer exist. The reason this seems potentially comforting to me is that we feel like we have done wrong by the laws of God. We feel like, if there is a God, and we have done what he didn’t want us to do, then we will be condemned. I submit that, if we knew what we were doing, if we knew the laws and knew we were violating them, the answer is yes. That is absolutely the truth. It seems interesting to me that we have this fear of that reality, and we hide behind it with doubt and denial. I would say that that alone was proof of the existence of the God in which I believe (as evidence of the light of Christ), but since all realities that each religion claims cannot exist simultaneously, and it is possible that there are subscribers to other religions who feel the same guilt that I do for actions that I do not deem unholy, I cannot put this forward as evidence at this time. Perhaps after thinking some more I will come up with something.

In any case, the reason I began this writing was that my personal belief is that religion alone could not inspire in us the feelings we have of guilt, or joy, or sorrow. It just doesn’t seem conceivable to me. Though I’m sure someone out there can come up with a logical explanation for the feelings I have. But I cannot believe them. I dunno. I felt like there was a purpose at the conclusion of this post, but I lost it. I’ll let you know when I’ve found it again.