The God I Don't Believe in

Not too long ago, while flipping through the channels, I came across the image of a collared fellow who asked a rather interesting question, but alas, not interesting enough for me to continue viewing. The query went something like this, "If you were to say you don't believe in a god, perhaps you should explain just what sort of god you don't believe in." (I know the question as I wrote it doesn't end with a question mark--it didn't seem to when the fellow on t.v. posed it, either.) It seemed to me to be a request for a positive ID of the explicit God with which one has disposed, when the concept of "atheist" disposes with all of them. It's like a backwards version of Dawkin's descriptions of believers as being, for the most part, atheists, except for the one they believe in.

But the collared fellow believed he had a "gotcha", so I mulled around how I might answer that. My response:

I do not believe in a god about which one can say things.

Now, that does come off as more "agnostic" than "atheistic", but I phrase it that way to avoid being cornered into the whole "proving a negative" box. If I decline to rise to the bait of utterly denying the possibility of an inordinately complex, onmipotent, omniscient, singular entity that predated and caused the universe, I can at least throw the opposite "bait" back.

What exactly do we know about this "god"?

What reason do we have to suppose he (she, or it) is actually one-of-a-kind? Why would we suppose such an entity is merciful, moral, or just--within human understanding of those terms?

Do we suppose it, he, or she, or a multiplicity of them, in a universe of this size, have any particular affinity or concern for humans? If we were especially created beings--what purpose do we serve? Are we created to worship? Are we designed for labor? Are we....livestock? Just looking at this planet and its conditions and the other lifeforms dwelling on the topmost, solar-exposed, crusty bit we scratch out our living on, it seems clear that we lack the adaptive or reproductive resources of the rat, the cockroach, the ant, and the flea. Our much-vaunted sentience matters little to e. Coli, mosquitos, yersinia pestis, the HIV virus, and many other not especially sentient but nonetheless prolific organisms. Thus, consumption disposes of a Keats, yet any number of less aware contemporaries managed their three score and ten, or even a four score and seven.

The arguments in favor of a belief in God often rest on the probability of one particular God, in which the interrogator happens to believe. Pascal's wager, for example, asks the hearer to double-down on Yahweh & Son, because they offer the best deal. Eternal damnation vs. eternal salvation and an all-expenses paid by the blood of the Lamb trip to Paradise. This tends to presuppose that the worst case scenario, i.e. the eternal torment and weeping and gnashing of teeth, is always the worst thing that could happen in any cosmology, no matter what the turn of the wheel brings. A more beneficial reincarnation or a final dirtnap were not on Pascal's Holy Roulette Table. I have even heard a certain conservative writer insist on the Judeo-Christian firm because they were more progressive. I am unmoved. If Yahweh, then Thor. Or Zeus. Or Brahma. Or Moloch. Or Cthulhu.

Exactly. If Saul of Tarsus or John of Patmos had it wrong, why then, why didn't H.P. Lovecraft have it right? If we were to envision a complex entity that might have a need or at least, a use for us, why not suppose it meant to eat our presumptive souls? Not implausible, once you've accepted there has to be some kind of higher power. Take a look at the world we live in. Scraping, yearning, surviving, feeling. We are the chosen creatures on this planet largely because we taste so darn good to the Old Ones. They let us proliferate from the Equator out to nearly the Poles, and all their propaganda through various religious fronts encourage us to propagate--asking us to eschew contraception, abortion, and euthanasia.

Why? To have more souls to feed more Elders.

Obviously, I'm taking a flight of fancy to not exactly prove a point that I have resolved not to resolve in my own mind unless some kind of "incontrovertable" (contingently) evidence asserted itself--

And even then I think I'd be skeptical. Incontrovertable--says who? Cosmic equivalent of your Nigerian spam, and all that. The short of the long?--Non credo. Or to be more specific, and render my belief into a positive, I have no preconceptions about the possibility of any entity higher than myself, and have therefore resolved to live my life according to the positive merit implicit in preventing harm that comes from myself. I will try to avoid hurting in favor of healing. In full comtemplation of consequences, I mean to create positive results--the end does not justify the means if the means themselves create pain.

To the extent of not deriving my morality from any god, I think that should I find judgement before any such entity, I would ask to see the maths to know where it and I diverged. And I might still debate.

In other words, the God I don't believe in is just that: a God I don't believe in. I'm not just somehow put off of Christianity or whatever because I so very want to do sinful things. Oh woe is me. No. I just don't believe, and I want to do good, and also let others know they can still do good even if they don't believe, either. I don't believe I need a god to make me want to do good.