Picking What to Believe

Picking What to Believe

A friend of mine asked me a question.

"What if you don't know what to believe?  Where do you go from there? I need to know if there really is a god and that we're not just here by chance. How do you know you're in the right religion or does it matter?"

These questions condense down to three profound questions

1. Is there a god?

2. If so, does it matter what we believe?

3. If so, what is the right 'religion'

Why?

1. If there is no god, it really doesn't matter what you believe.  
2. If there is a god, but that God cares less about what we believe, then any or all religion is good enough.
3. If there is a god, and that God cares, it would seem to me that choosing the correct faith is a critical matter of eternal significance.

The Existence of God.

This is a true/false answer (or a boolean in computer-speak). So let's state the two possibilities frankly.

1. There is a God

2. There is no God

Each position has some implicit assumptions.

• If there is a God, God has to have always existed.  If not, something else would have had to create God, and that would be God.
• If there is no God then matter, space and time had to always exist.  If mater, space, and time were created, something else would have had to create it, and that would be God.

• If there is a God, then God created the universe in some manner.
• If there is no God the universe just happened.

• If there is a God, it may or may not be the case that religion is meaningless, depending on what that God thought.
• If there is no God, then religion is meaningless, and any or none is as good any other. Then again, if there is no God then life is meaningless and without purpose, and we are just rearranged pond scum.  We are nothing more than bags of chemicals.

In future posts, I'll broach each of those assumptions.  The first of which will be the Existent of God