Wow, check out the rest of this refreshing take on belief by Penn Jillette on NPR.
Believing there’s no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I’m wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don’t travel in circles where people say, “I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.” That’s just a long-winded religious way to say, “shut up,” or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, “How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do.” So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that’s always fun. It means I’m learning something.Believing there is no God means the suffering I’ve seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.
A refugee from Poland, who saw a bit of suffering, told me to leave God out of it when wondering about suffering. The Germans and Hitler caused his suffereing, not God.
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I quite agree Bill. I don’t like it when I hear people tell someone one of the many versions of God caused their suffering, including that God knew they were strong enough to handle it.
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My only fear about some believers is that they aren’t concerned about the consequences of their actions because they think God is going to make it all better ~ like the environment.
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