What DO you believe?

This blog post marks my 300th and I can think of no more appropriate discussion to signify the 300th post, let alone as a topic to begin Lent.

I've been disturbed of late by an ever more aggressive attack by Atheists on Christianity in specific and religion in general. Their arguments, though now conveyed by all the modern conveniences, have not changed in thousands of years. How can We believe in the things that are written? How can We believe in a man who claimed to be the risen Christ? How can We believe in an invisible creator who made everything, even us, and yet, does not reveal Himself to us? Isn't religion just a trap? Isn't it something make believe that We all want really really badly, so we made it up? There is no evidence for any of it and any of us who believe it, therefore, are delusional. The world would be better off without religion.

Perhaps they're right. We must, for a moment, concede the fact that We can not physically see God. We must concede the fact that much of the life of Jesus Christ is a mystery and that none of us can empirically prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that He existed, much less was raised from the dead. We have no proof that the universe was created. We have no triggering mechanism for life and nobody that We can see has ever stepped forward and claimed to be the creator. Religion has been the cause of so much turmoil and destruction that perhaps we would be better off if it had never been discovered.

And so what does that leave us with? What is the alternative to a world filled with religious belief and faith? What DO these atheists purport to believe in?

Anthropology can't grasp religion. Despite the fact that science has tried to understand the dynamics that make it work, change, and effect so many people, science can't grasp what religion is exactly. They can't define it. It is as elusive to anthropologists as the GUT theory is to physicists. They have tried to define it as a system by which a society controls its members. They have tried to define it as a social heirarchy that exists on a level outside of society, but that has a defining presence on any society that it contacts. But one thing pure science can not allow is a definition of anthropology that includes the existence of a divine being or beings controlling the universe - which is sort of like trying to define an Oreo without believing in the existence of cream filling. It can't be done. And when you really think about it, there is no such world that could exist without religion.

Many atheists say that they believe in a moral universe, not a religious one. But moral to who? And to what purpose? What does it mean to be good? Or evil? If there is nobody that will judge your ultimate actions? If our existence is merely tied to one life time on Earth, give or take all, one roll of the dice, and then... oblivion; what does any of it matter?

Without a backbone of belief, law has no meaning. Without a backbone of belief, good and evil have no meaning. Without a backbone of belief, existence is purely chemical. We are no more and no less important than the flea on a dog, or an amoeba. We exist. Our life is meaningless. Our existence is a cruel joke - a longer lived May Fly. To what end?

The universe boomed into existence. The universe expanded, cooled, created worlds, created Earth. Life formed. Life evolved. We're born. We grow. We procreate. We die. The universe cools. The universe dies. How very depressing.

If an atheist truly believes what they say they believe, then none of this matters. Life is just existence. Love is just chemical. Joy is just hormones. Sunset is just science. Money is just economics. Everything is controlled by an immutable set of laws that just popped into existence of their own accord and we are just cogs in the wheel of existence.

But I don't believe that for one second, and I don't think there's a single atheist on the planet that does either. You couldn't exist if you truly thought that. There'd be no reason to exist. There'd be no point in raising your child. There'd be no way for the human race to have ever survived. We'd have never had a reason to evolve.

God created every single one of us. We all have a purpose here on Earth. Each of our purposes is hopelessly entangled with each other's purposes, so that no matter what we do, it involves interaction with one another. None of us is more important than any other and none of us have it completely right. We all matter. We're all important. And we all share in the bounty of God's love.

You can decide what you want to believe. I can't decide for you. But as for me, I'm going to believe in something, because quite frankly, there really is no other choice.