Does God Exist?

Going through breast cancer on the sidelines has been a life-changing experience for me. Above all, it has shaken my already weak belief in God to the core. For years I have been trying not to notice the gross inconsistencies in the whole thing, and seeing one of my best friends fighting this thing for no good reason is icing on the cake. I'm not sure I have the balls yet to say "God does not exist", but here are some notable observations on the subject.

When I worked at Pizza Hut (during college--fun job!), there was another driver who had served two tours in Vietnam in the infantry. His two brothers had also been there on the ground. All three had survived without a scratch, and my driver buddy swore up and down that it was because his mother had prayed for them all twice a day, attended mass every day, etc. I can't say for sure, but I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that of the 50,000+ Americans lost in Vietnam, there was at least one whose mom prayed three times a day, went to mass, and so on. In other words, what makes my driver friend think he was the chosen one? Why would God choose to spare him and his brothers, yet take another whose family was even more devout?

When my wife was a little girl, there was a news story about a school bus accident. One child was killed, and many others were seriously injured. When she asked her mom why it had happened, the reply was something like, "God decided it was his time to go." My wife remembers thinking how strange it was that God would hurt all those other kids just so he could take one.

A college friend of mine recently had her third child, who came from an unplanned pregnancy. Her Christmas letter was nauseating--she must have used the word "blessed" at least 20 times, and even used it twice in one sentence. "Just when you think you can't handle any more in your life, God blesses you with another blessing." I wonder what on earth makes her think that she's God's pet project??? Meanwhile, other human beings (other CREATED beings, in her world), are starving on the street, being raped and murdered, and so on. There is no way to intellectually reconcile this.

My dad had a good friend who recently died from lung cancer. He was an older gentleman, maybe early 70's, and had touched a lot of people in his life with his wisdom and insight. My dad said that "God was through with him. He had passed the torch to me and others like me." So if my good friend (age 33, by the way, with a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old) doesn't beat breast cancer, am I to presume that God was through with her too? Again, I have always believed in a loving God, not a punishing one, and therefore can't reconcile how anyone could think that it would be better for these little boys and their daddy to be without their mommy for the rest of their lives. If God has decided this, why doesn't he decide that a crack whore who is prostituting her child for drugs needs to die, and that the child would find an adoptive home that would love and nourish her?

Do you think that the Greeks (mythology), Aztecs, Muslims, Buddhists, Native Americans, or any other religion believe any less fervently in their ideologies than Christians do? Or that they have any less evidence for their stories being true? With 70% of the world being non-Christian, am I to believe that Christians are the chosen ones, and they just haven't spread the word everywhere yet? Or that they are just the latest group to try to explain things we have no good explanation for?

Good friends who live close to us were listening to me talk about my friend the other day, and one of them said, "Don't worry, there's more. Just keep looking, you'll find it." Therein lies the total arrogance of my really religious friends--they assume that everyone is seeking something, and that unless they have found the same beliefs, they must be poor lost souls. I wanted to tell her that I was doing just fine, thank you, and that her inconsistent and illogical beliefs were just that.

This brings me to the crux of the issue--you can't have it both ways. I have heard the phrase that "God is either everything, or he is nothing" and I have to agree. Either God is all-powerful or he isn't. Our feeble human excuses and explanations are hollow and empty. If God Is, then little kids die on school buses because God decided they would die. If some soldiers die in Vietnam, it is because God said it would be so. To say that "God has a plan" is crazy--that says that God intentionally created lots of imperfect beings, namely humans, who are capable of murdering millions in war, thousands more in "conflicts", innocents in acts of terrorism, and so on. It also says that God is witnessing all this suffering, and allowing it to continue. Otherwise, if God is truly all-powerful, he could snap his fingers and say, "No more war." snap "No more killing." snap "People of the world all get along." snap "No one remembers suffering of the past." snap "No more cancer." snap Or whatever. Any other possibility means he is simply watching it all with interest and hoping we eventually make the right choices, which we clearly aren't capable of. That's just plain sadistic. Maybe Depeche Mode were right.

So what about a God that's not all-powerful? Would he even be called God? Would any religion embrace such an entity? Could the very idea of God, that is, something before which we humble ourselves, be God? In other words, could it be possible that God is not a scentient being, doesn't look like us and wear long white robes, and is simply a concept that we embrace in order to live more disciplined and meaningful lives? Could it be that God only exists in our minds and books in order to comfort us and to help us make sense of things like my friend's current situation, and to give us (false) hope that when we die, we don't really die? Would such a notion of God be any less powerful in our daily lives than the notion of a puppeteer who holds every string?

I opened by saying that this cancer experience has shaken my belief system to the core. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about that is how peaceful I've felt since I've started considering the idea that there is no God. It has been liberating, and I can't understand why. Maybe because I've shed all the guilt that is associated with God (and I'm not even Catholic!), and have realized that, as is stated in Desiderata, "You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here." Every doctrine I've ever been around has requirements and conditions on it, and this may be the first time that I realize that the wonder of my own life may be all the doctrine I need.

Does God exist? I leave it to you.