The catechism states that God doesn’t love; God is love. A divine essence, not a bearded shot-caller in the sky. Marcus Aurelius called it “virtue,” but it can also be justice or truth or whatever elusive/illusory quality of humanity’s best desire, of which there is precious fuck-all here on planet Earth.
Eastern religions that don’t even have godheads use this as well, and see as the ultimate goal removing oneself from the Wheel of Suffering and Desire.
Most people don’t have the same abilities in the annihilation of the ego as Buddhist or Trappist monks, but at least have enough common sense to nope out when someone’s stirring the shit.
Even if someone can’t make the leap to there being no god, they should be trying to reconcile their beliefs of god with their observations to get a better understanding of god. Religious people often say that there are aspects of god that they don’t understand. That should also apply to the beliefs they have of their god. If someone believes god is everywhere, is all knowing, is all powerful, and is all loving, then they should ponder how flooding a religious camp fits in with those attributes. They should consider re-evaluating their beliefs of their god. Perhaps their god isn’t really all powerful or isn’t really all loving. That doesn’t mean their god doesn’t exist. What it means is that the person’s belief of god is incorrect. It’s hard to reconcile how the Christian god could flood a bible camp, but it’s pretty easy to understand how Zeus could do it. Zeus took out his wrath on the Greeks all the time. If a village was flooded, the Greeks just shrugged their shoulders and said, “Oh, there goes Zeus again.” Events like these should cause Christians to consider if their beliefs of God are true or just their own wishful thinking.
Yeah. I barely managed differential calculus back in school, and that was merely GCSE ‘A’ level Maths. My teacher may have been a demi-god, because I passed.
There are plenty of things I can’t comprehend, but that is why we have scientists who can.
Just to add: no few logisticians (many of them atheists) have addressed the Problem of Evil, beyond the “religious people are either grifters or suckers, unlike me” conceits.
The thing is, people want to live with hope and peace in a world that hardly allows much of either. More depressing: those who achieve some measure of it do so at the expense of those less powerful, and even then confuse materialism and sensualism with contentment.
Obviously, believing in supernatural phenomena, and joining corruptible/dysfunctional churches is no relief for an intelligent, moral and independently-minded person. But what other avenues to peace and hope do they adopt? Or should they just hang tough like @Spice_Weasel’s Nietzsche, and just be reincarnated as a polar bear over and over?
You recognize reality (note my custom title) and do your level best to live the life you think you ought to live, to be the kind of person you respect. Life is, indeed, tough for most people, but it’s better than living in a fog of fantasy.
Look at Pascal’s wager from the other side: from fear of eternal damnation, spend your life striving to believe in and follow the teachings (if you can figure out which ones) of God. If it’s all true, after death you (might) win eternal life in heaven and avoid hell; if it’s not true, what have you lost? I think you’ve lost your whole life, the only one you’ve got, catering to the irrational.
“This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, “Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it’s all true you’ll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn’t then you’ve lost nothing, right?” When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We’re going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts…”
