Hot Topic: Why I Believe in God

A few days ago, my father's business partner had quite a few drinks and started talking to me about the existence of God. He asked me, "how can you, as a highly educated person, believe in God?" I just sat there for a few seconds. No one's asked me that before, people have just always left me alone to my own devices when it comes to my religious beliefs. So without a moment's hesitation and in the most basic and simplest way, I answered, "Earth is in a position just far away from the sun, tilted just perfect at 23.4 degrees, and the moon is just the right distance and size and we orbit the sun at just the right speed. I don't think that's all by chance. I can't see that as something that happened by accident."

Lets get to it:

My mother was a Buddhist and converted to Catholicism once she married my Catholic father. I went to a very strong protestant Christian school in the most populated Muslim country in the world. I go to the predominantly Hindu island of Bali twice a year and I have good atheist friends. I am very accepting of all religions because I see them as people who want to live righteously and serve their people in the best way possible. 

My father always said that we're all praying to the same God, we just call Him different names. 

But these religions are just fan clubs. If they do something wrong, I don't blame their God, just like how you don't blame Selena Gomez when her crazy-ass fans do something stupid. So I do believe in God, or the existence of a higher being, but I don't believe in man's organized religion. The Church isn't always right. They are powered by God but driven by men. Don't blame the car if the driver can't drive a stick shift. 

People say believing in God is all about faith. But it's not really. Believing in God is like solving a puzzle. With the Bible, you have several pieces lined up, enough to get the big picture, but not enough to see everything. I will for the rest of my life search for the missing puzzle pieces, but I know I will fail greatly. I am willing to accept that I will never understand God. But just because I don't have all the pieces, doesn't mean there's no picture.

The Bible is the biggest reason why I believe in a higher power. The Bible is thousands of years old and written throughout 1,500 years by over 40 different people in different languages. Yet the books make up one story about God, prophesied the same Messiah, and has literary consistency. Sure, several things have changed, like how in the New Testament, eating shellfish is now allowed and wearing garments of different fabrics is totally a-okay, but those Old Testament rules were only relative to the time and place of the community. Just like how swine flu originated in Mexico and consuming pigs were cautioned, but people in Norway can still eat their local pigs no problem. 

The Bible has also scientific revelations. Thousands of years ago, the spherical Earth was accounted for. The hydrologic cycle was mentioned. So were gravitational fields. These all go way back, written thousands of years ago.

I also think Jesus is one cool guy. In the words of comedian John Fugelsang,  “Look at the character of Jesus: He scares the hell out of conservatives even today. He was a peaceful, radical non-violent revolutionary who hung out with lepers, hookers and crooks, never spoke English, wasn’t an American citizen, anti-wealth, anti-death penalty, anti-public prayer, never anti-gay, never anti-abortion, never anti-premarital sex, long-haired, brown skin, homeless Middle Eastern Jew.”

No one hates Jesus. It doesn't matter what your religion is, you just can't hate a guy that never did or said anything wrong. Even the Jews are probably like, "I don't think He's the Messiah but He was the bomb diggity." 

Jesus was a historical figure and historians would claim the same. The stories about him match up with archeological evidence found. So it's not like we're praying to a completely invisible man in the sky. At least my invisible man went down for a quick visit and marked His territory.

Being a Catholic also means I'm a creationist, which is laughable by many. "God created the Earth in 7 days? Yeah, sure, buddy." But God lives outside of time and space, in 2 Peter 3:8, it says "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." God didn't create the world from Monday to Sunday, alright. He created it in freaking thousands of years so chill out. 

Also, science can be wrong. Remember that most scientific 'facts' about the universe are just strong theories. But do you want me to remind you of the geocentric universe, immovable continents, the four humours of human physiology, static universe, and a flat earth? The greatest minds and the most accepted scientific theories can be and have been wrong for centuries.

Us Catholics might be wrong too but you atheists shouldn't act all hoity toity talking about scientific 'facts' that prove God doesn't exist. Remember, you might be wrong also.

Believing in God is difficult. It's hard when you find out things that don't fit your puzzle and your faith is shaken. But if you watch this video of the knowable universe, it's difficult to think that we're just here by pure accident. Us humans were designed with a conscience and intellect. We were born with a soul. We were born to laugh. We were born to be much more than robots, and the idea that we can think makes me confident that this cannot all be by chance.

Science and religion are two sides of the same coin. I believe the Earth was created slowly and as complicated as science books make it out to be, but I also believe that someone saw it through.

I believe in God for many more reasons. Reasons I cannot write in this post otherwise I'll end up writing a dissertation. I am also just as confused and angry as the atheists, but I cannot shake the undeniable feeling that there's something out there that made all this and all of us. At the end of the day, when I feel thankful for the little things in my life, I know I have someone to thank.

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it?... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning. " - C.S. Lewis