God has thrown us away like an old toy (Religion)

Member Name: dawnfrancis

Product:	Religion
Date:	11/01/02 (87 review reads)
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There is a God. Or at least, there’s a strong possibility that one could exist. But if you’re thinking of praying to him for any reason I’ve got news for you. Save your breath. He’s not listening.

We hear lots about different faiths and even quite a bit about atheism. But we hear little about another system of religious ‘belief’ – agnosticism. I am an agnostic and would like to redress this balance and explain how I came to believe the things I believe in. Before that, though, I would like to stress that I in no way wish to offend believers of other faiths, and that I would in fact love to receive comments from them. Searching for answers and asking others for their views is very important to me in trying to understand the pain that haunts so many in the world.

1. WHAT IS AN AGNOSTIC?

The word is derived from a Greek one which literally means ‘no knowledge’. The theist says God exists. The atheist says he doesn’t. The agnostic sits on the fence and says that we can have no possible way of knowing for sure either way. Most agnostics are closer in beliefs to atheists than to theists.

Some agnostics, like myself, believe that God may indeed exist but that he has permanently turned his back on the world and has absolutely no involvement in our lives, either on a personal or more global level. We have been abandoned to the forces of nature and evil with no hope of intercession from on high.

2. WHAT EVIDENCE IS THERE THAT GOD HAS ABANDONED US?

Come with me for an hour into the hospital where I work and I will show you.

The nature and extent of human suffering is such that it is completely irreconcilable with the idea that a loving merciful and caring God exists.

God can do anything. He’s the greatest bloke around. What he says, goes. He is all-powerful. The fact that suffering exists can mean only one of these things:


1. He actually doesn’t exist
2. He exists but he is a vengeful and spiteful being
3. He exists but he is powerless to intervene
4. He exists, but he does not choose to intervene.

Option no. 1 is difficult to take as we can never truly 100pc say whether there is or isn’t a God. Options 2 and 3 have to be dismissed on the grounds of pure logic. If God was spiteful he wouldn’t be God. If God was powerless, he couldn’t be God by definition!!! This leaves us with only one option. He’s up there with all the power and ability one could wish for, and he’s keeping it all to himself, leaving us to cope alone.

3. BUT ISN’T THERE A PURPOSE TO SUFFERING?

Yes and no. Lots of people believe that God might ‘allow’ suffering for a higher reason that is not always immediately apparent to us.

Indeed there are many examples where wonderful things have come from intense suffering. Anne Diamond lost her baby to cot death, but because of this, the lives of thousands of other babies have been saved by her relentless campaigning. The parents of Anthony Nolan set up a charity to match bone marrow donors with recipients, thus giving immeasurable meaning to their son’s death. Many people’s lives change dramatically for the better after times of extreme crisis.

The trouble is, for every account of meaningful suffering there is one in which the suffering has absolutely NO higher purpose.

Example#1. a few years ago I met a patient who had a very severe stroke. For many weeks she was semi-conscious but seemed ‘happy’ in her own way and always smiled pleasantly if you greeted her.

Eventually she fully regained consciousness – only to be greeted by a life of hell. She could not walk, talk, read, write, or understand speech. She could not even take care of her personal hygiene. She would be like this till the end of her l
ife. I and many of the other medical staff believe she understood this. Sleep was her only refuge. The very minute she awoke she would begin this relentless spine-chilling howling, her wordless distress all too apparent. Literally, every single second was living misery for this woman.

To this day I can hear that howling, like an animal caught in a trap and when I remember it I break down inside. She knew there was no way out. She couldn’t even kill herself.

I challenge anyone to find purpose and meaning in this woman’s private hell. Being totally helpless how on earth could she put her suffering to good use?? What earthly point is there in making someone so wretched that they cannot even stand a moment of consicousness?

And if you were God, would you not have helped this woman? Or at the very least put her out of her misery?

Instead…..nothing happened. She got no better, but death did not come to free her. As far as I know she is still incarcerated in her own living torment.

What is the purpose of this? What can be the purpose of a tiny baby such as Jennifer Brown, being born only to die 10 days later? What is the purpose of depression so intense that it leads one to suicide? I could go on – you get the point.

4. WHAT ABOUT KARMA?

Some people believe that we suffer because we did something bad in a previous life and this is now our punishment.

I find this view indefensible and very, very dangerous. It allows us to criticize and feel superior to others. It sets the stage for discriminatory practices against disabled and sick people.

Not only that but it is totally incompatible with the idea of a loving God, and therefore lends support to one version of an atheistic/agnostic argument which states that God is wicked.

5. WHAT ABOUT FREE WILL?

The most common Christian ‘explanation’ for suffering is that God gave us free
will. We can choose whether to do good or evil. We can choose whether to believe in him or not. This explains the existence of bad people.

Since these choices ultimately affect our spiritual future (putting it very basically – whether we get to heaven or not), God logically cannot intervene in bad things. For example, if he stopped murderers from murdering, we do not truly have free will and therefore all he has created are mindless robots who automatically serve him - whereas God wants us to have the CHOICE of how to behave.

There are two very major flaws with this argument:

1. It can account for the existence of such problems as war and murder, but it does not explain the existence of other types of suffering such as mental and physical illness. Of course we can choose whether to do good or bad. But we have no choice over being sick or well. Yet illness still exists. Why?
2. Animals suffer too, yet they are (in many Christian accounts) not supposed to have souls and therefore should not be subjected to the disadvantages of having free will.

6. WHAT ABOUT THE EVIDENCE FOR GOD’S WORK IN PEOPLE’S LIVES?

There are many stories of miraculous healing after intense prayer. On a lesser note, there are also plenty of people who will tell you how God helped them through difficult events in their lives.
But if God really IS involved in people’s lives we should see it more consistently. Instead what we have is a completely random metering out of suffering and healing:

CASE #2 I treat a patient who has been irreversibly brain damaged by an aneurysm. Myra Hindley the child killer was successfully treated for this condition with no lasting after effects. In whose life is God involved here?

CASE #3 One of my former patients was a young girl with an incurable progressive brain disease. Over the years I saw her lose more and more of her mental faculties and her family a
re plunged into unremitting torment. They are all devout Catholics. Where is their miracle? God won’t even let her die.

CASE #4. God did not bother to turn up at the Twin Towers on Sep 11. So how can people believe he’s involved in the far more trivial aspects of their lives?

7. CONCLUSIONS

All of my above arguments neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. But I believe that they show with 100pc certainty that God is not involved in any of our lives, in any way.

Many things in the Bible may seem hard to believe. But in comparison to the existence of suffering, even the Virgin Birth becomes quite plausible. Put simply – there is no earthly (or heavenly) reason why God should stand by while his ‘children’ are tortured. The fact that he continues to do so says it all.

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