Letters to the Editor

• Here's What's Great About Salon, and Faith in General

  [Read the article: I don't believe in atheists]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  We're talking. We're listening. We're learning.

  I appreciate the heartfelt sentiments here from both those who do believe in God and those that don't.

  I appreciate the fact that we are all trying to find our way in this world, that we are all, in our own way, trying to do and be good. To have purpose.

  I certainly don't believe that atheists and agnostics would not rather be comforted by the feeling that God is present, loves them, and wants them to live forever.

  Who wouldn't want peace and eternal life? However, for many of you, it just doesn't make sense now, and may never make sense. To you, if God is a mystery, it's a problem. The way that you have chosen to deal with the confusion is to conclude that if you can't understand God, God must not exist...

  More importantly, I understand that by and large, you have come to that conclusion after careful study of religion and philosophy.

  So, may I gently suggest that, for you and me, we continue to study. Continue to being open to learning something that will inspire us.

  And yes, be open to faith. Your faith now is in a deep-set belief that there is no God. I understand that.

  But just as you came to that understanding through study and thought, certainly you have to admit it's possible, at some time in the future, to come to a different conclusion.

  Because again, I'm sure you don't consider yourself to be a person who understands everything in the known universe. We're all human, we're all flawed.

  We are all, I hope, still open to the idea of having hope.

  That is, for me, and you, the root of our faith. Hope. Right now, you hope (believe, have the opinion) that your belief in in the non-existence of God will carry you through this life and into the ground.

  I hope (believe, have the opinion) that your continued openess to love, to wonder, to beauty, to all things beyond your understanding will lead you to a place where people like me are at:

  - I know God exists, because I am not God and know that the universe that we live in is not supported by the concept of random chance.

  Micro evolution occurs all the time. People are taller, frogs are smaller... on and on. But just as Pasteur proved many years ago... there is no case, in this world, no scientifically peer-reviewed experiment, where life emerged from non-life.

  Science can screw around with organic material, can splice genes and what not.

  But a bug will never and has never, emerged from a pile of inorganic material.

  Not a single cell has ever emerged from inorganic material.

  So, your faith in the non-existence of God is stronger than mine.

  Your belief is a fairy tale of billions of years of primordial sludge that begat life. It is a quaint to me as a belief as you no doubt feel my archeolocally-proven belief in Eden is.

  Just keep reading, keep learning, and keep focused on one thing-

  What if? What if?

  Permalink Friday, March 14, 2008 09:38 AM