God, Part II

I don't believe in God. I'm an atheist.

I wanted to state that as plainly and succinctly as I could, right up front, so I could get it out of the way, because in the end, when you're talking about God, what you don't believe matters much less than what you DO believe.

So, while I don't believe in God (proper noun) as a conscious and all-powerful being that lives in the sky and controls all aspects of my life, I probably do believe in god (catch all common noun) as a name for all the things that influence my life and are beyond my control. In my view, the wind is god, and my kids are god and traffic is god, and, to some odd degree, other people's perceptions of God are god. I'm not running the show, so if I want to live a good life, I have to navigate this vast set of circumstances that aren't of my making, and I call those circumstances 'god.'

I used to be a strident atheist, a devout non-believer, sure of my positions and scornful of other people's beliefs. Now, I don't care so much. Because when it rains, whether that's God whizzing on us or a simple over-saturation of water vapor in the clouds, the fact remains that I'm getting wet. Believers and non-believers live on the same planet. We all move in a world of effects, regardless of the true causes. I mostly think it's best to get on with it, however you can.

I won't belabor any of my core points by arguing against the existence of God, as others conceive it (him? her?), because I don't see any real point. I find supernatural explanations for human experience entirely unnecessary, not even tempting, because, as near as I can see, the natural explanations are as fantastic as anything anyone could make up.

I'm satisfied with not knowing how the world works completely, or rather I'm satisfied with only finding out very slowly how they work. That, to me, is the human experience.

God could exist. I don't think so, but if I'm honest I really don't know. What I do know is that if a biblical God does exist, his workings are so far beyond my faculties of understanding, as to make any examination of them pointless.

I'll leave any further reference to Christianity for another post.