Why is there a God?
Since a vast majority of Americans already know the answer to “is there a God?” I am asking different questions. Why is there a God? Why do you believe in God? Where did your belief come from? Why do you continue to hold on to this belief? The answers to some of these questions are actually quite easy. But before I answer them, let me tell you a story.
Several thousand years ago there were three prisoners chained to the floor of a cave facing the cave wall. Behind the prisoners was a large fire and a road. The fire cast shadows of the people and animals that passed along the road. All the prisoners ever saw were these shadows. All they ever herd was the sounds echoing in the cave from the travelers. All they smelled was the burning firewood. This was all they ever knew there whole lives. One day, one of the prisoners is allowed to stand up and turn around. He for the first time sees the fire that cast the shadows. He sees the people and animals on the road. He is allowed to leave the cave to see the real world.
Ok so that’s not the most interesting story ever, nor am I the best story teller but it’s the analysis of the story that has significance. This is not my story; it’s the Greek Philosopher Plato’s Allegory of the Cave [1]. What’s important to understand in this story is that all the prisoners ever saw was the shadows. There whole life was spent down there in the cave. They had no knowledge of the outside world. Their existence, their reality was the cave and the shadows. Because they had no knowledge of the outside world, to them it did not exist. Everything they knew to be true, everything they knew for a fact to be true was actually false. They were living a lie and it was not until one of them was release from his chains that he saw the truth.
What does all this have to do with the existence of God and why so many of us believe in it? We are all born in the cave. From the moment we are born we are preached to about the existence of God. When we are children our parents tell us that we must love God for he is responsible for everything we know. God is the creator of the universe. God is good and we must give him our thanks. As children we have a natural tendency to believe in anything any everything an adult tells us. The adults around us create the cave that we are raised in. God is the shadows on the wall. Since we have no knowledge of any existence without God, we have no reason to believe otherwise.
My challenge to all that believe in God is to ask themselves the questions I have listed here. These seem like difficult questions, but I think that for most of us the answers are simple. We believe in God because we are told to from the beginning. We continue to hold on to this belief because that is all we know. Like the prisoners in the cave, we have no existence outside of God. But unlike the prisoners we are able to stand up and turn around. Unfortunately very few of us ever do. Very few of us bother to find out if we believe, or if it is society that believes. How many of you have spent even ten minutes to decide if you really believe? How many of you have ever even considered the possibility that there is no God? I would think very few.
If the belief in God is just passed down from generation to generation, where did it come from in the first place? It came from us. The infinite curiosity of the human mind created God. We created God because we could not explain why the sun rises and sets. We created God because we did not understand how a sperm cell fertilizes and egg. We created God because we did not understand that living creatures evolve and change to form new creatures. But thanks again to the human mind, we created something else to explain these things; science. Science is the opposite of God. God is the short and easy answer to everything. Why is the sky blue? Because, God made it that way. Or maybe it’s because blue light has a shorter wave length than that of other colors and gets caught in the air molecules in the atmosphere [2]. Which explanation is simpler? The God explanation. But to believe that the sky is blue because God made it that way is to not even try to escape the cave. Holding on to the belief in God is reinforcing the chains holding you to the floor.
I do not want to live my life in the cave. I want to see the world for as it is. I do not believe in God. I am an atheist.
References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_allegory_of_the_cave
[2] http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/sky_blue.html
Side note: This is the first of what I hope will be many though provoking essays that I write. Thanks to the wonderful power of the internet, I have a place to publish my work for all to access. Please feel free to send me email and let me know what your think.
Several thousand years ago there were three prisoners chained to the floor of a cave facing the cave wall. Behind the prisoners was a large fire and a road. The fire cast shadows of the people and animals that passed along the road. All the prisoners ever saw were these shadows. All they ever herd was the sounds echoing in the cave from the travelers. All they smelled was the burning firewood. This was all they ever knew there whole lives. One day, one of the prisoners is allowed to stand up and turn around. He for the first time sees the fire that cast the shadows. He sees the people and animals on the road. He is allowed to leave the cave to see the real world.
Ok so that’s not the most interesting story ever, nor am I the best story teller but it’s the analysis of the story that has significance. This is not my story; it’s the Greek Philosopher Plato’s Allegory of the Cave [1]. What’s important to understand in this story is that all the prisoners ever saw was the shadows. There whole life was spent down there in the cave. They had no knowledge of the outside world. Their existence, their reality was the cave and the shadows. Because they had no knowledge of the outside world, to them it did not exist. Everything they knew to be true, everything they knew for a fact to be true was actually false. They were living a lie and it was not until one of them was release from his chains that he saw the truth.
What does all this have to do with the existence of God and why so many of us believe in it? We are all born in the cave. From the moment we are born we are preached to about the existence of God. When we are children our parents tell us that we must love God for he is responsible for everything we know. God is the creator of the universe. God is good and we must give him our thanks. As children we have a natural tendency to believe in anything any everything an adult tells us. The adults around us create the cave that we are raised in. God is the shadows on the wall. Since we have no knowledge of any existence without God, we have no reason to believe otherwise.
My challenge to all that believe in God is to ask themselves the questions I have listed here. These seem like difficult questions, but I think that for most of us the answers are simple. We believe in God because we are told to from the beginning. We continue to hold on to this belief because that is all we know. Like the prisoners in the cave, we have no existence outside of God. But unlike the prisoners we are able to stand up and turn around. Unfortunately very few of us ever do. Very few of us bother to find out if we believe, or if it is society that believes. How many of you have spent even ten minutes to decide if you really believe? How many of you have ever even considered the possibility that there is no God? I would think very few.
If the belief in God is just passed down from generation to generation, where did it come from in the first place? It came from us. The infinite curiosity of the human mind created God. We created God because we could not explain why the sun rises and sets. We created God because we did not understand how a sperm cell fertilizes and egg. We created God because we did not understand that living creatures evolve and change to form new creatures. But thanks again to the human mind, we created something else to explain these things; science. Science is the opposite of God. God is the short and easy answer to everything. Why is the sky blue? Because, God made it that way. Or maybe it’s because blue light has a shorter wave length than that of other colors and gets caught in the air molecules in the atmosphere [2]. Which explanation is simpler? The God explanation. But to believe that the sky is blue because God made it that way is to not even try to escape the cave. Holding on to the belief in God is reinforcing the chains holding you to the floor.
I do not want to live my life in the cave. I want to see the world for as it is. I do not believe in God. I am an atheist.
References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_allegory_of_the_cave
[2] http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/sky_blue.html
Side note: This is the first of what I hope will be many though provoking essays that I write. Thanks to the wonderful power of the internet, I have a place to publish my work for all to access. Please feel free to send me email and let me know what your think.
posted by David Aldrich at
10:27 PM
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