God

I do not care one way or another if you believe in Him as long as you have reason for your opinions. If you have been charmed by Richard Dawkins, fine. If you have converted to Christianity because you have done your research and decided that the facts and possibilities leave little doubt that He does exist, that's fine also.

What I fail to understand is people who simply do not give it a thought. The people who believe just because they have grown up in a religious family and the people who don't believe because they feel that to believe is to look up to a bearded old man in the sky and be forgiven for any conceivable sin.

I asked my mother the other day whether she believes that there must be something more to life than atoms and she immediately said "no", but when I asked for a reason, I got the bearded man in the sky analogy. It's sad that so many people are exactly like my mother, being alive for almost 50 years and not thinking "well what was before The Big Bang?" or "is there a point to life?". When I challenged her on why she has never bothered to consider such things, she laughed and said they seemed futile when you've got to get the tea on and then settle down in front of Emmerdale. Futile!

I could think of many arguments for/against the cases of atheism vs. religion but "they're futile" wouldn't even cross my mind. Futile indeed! I literally banged my head against the wall.

Anyway, the reason that the question arose in the first place is because I am comparing two contrasting books, "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and it's direct attack, "Is God a delusion?" by Nicky Gumbel. I'm even going a touch further to investigate the more earthly matters of how reliable the historical records of Jesus are in a book called "The Case For Christ" by Lee Strobel. Interestingly enough, Dawkins does not directly contradict any of the more religious theories, though at first glance he does seem to. Anyway, I haven't finished the books but I just wanted to say that they are FASCINATING and my mind has been opened to a hell of a lot (excuse the pun) of ideas in the last few days.