When my daughter Katinka was seven years old, she was worried about my eternal well-being . She had been told that belief in God was the admission ticket to heaven and she urged me to make sure I got there. How to tell her I was an atheist without upsetting her? I told her, "Your kitty does not understand us. Likewise, we have a limited understanding". Forty years later, that is still my position. Leave alone what you are not equipped to understand. The Bible says that God created men in his image. Actually, we created God in our image and we fight ever since to the death over differences in our delusions. Better to leave God and the cause of everything a mystery.
Religion is a tribal device, a device for winning. A common belief creates social cohesion which gives a tribe a competitive advantage. Each tribe used to have its own God. Battles between tribes were perceived as battles between Gods. Until the Jews came with a big invention: monotheism! Jews proclaimed their God to be the one and only God. Other Gods were not just losers, they did not exist! At the time of that audacious invention, a virus broke out among the Assyrian army that beleaguered Jerusalem. (701 B.C.) Notwithstanding their numerical superiority, the Assyrians had to retreat. Jaweh scored a major marketing success. Yet, tribes keep fighting. Jerusalem is built on fourteen layers of ruins.
Religion is not the sole source of evil. People kill each other for other reasons as well. Religious wars are the most pernicious. Science nor civilization can contain religious fanaticism. In our time, think of
Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. For 400 years already!
Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq
Muslim and Hindus in India
Muslims and Christians in Syria and in Bosnia
Years ago, while being lost in a sea of people shuffling through Madrid at Easter, I wondered what these people around me were looking for. What were they looking for beyond eat & drink, work & sleep, quarrel & conjugate? Did immersion in a multitude provide an answer to a spiritual quest? Did it provide validation of their belief? Religious processions are like group sex; much excitement, little satisfaction. Miracles are spiritual porno.
Many books examine the elusive concept "God".
Karen Armstrong, The History of God;
Paul Davies, The Mind of God;
Sam Harris, The End of Faith;
Daniel Dennet, Breaking the Spell
Christopher Hitchens - God is not great
These books, in combination with reading history and the daily news, made me realize that agnosticism is too passive a position. Agnosticism implies tolerance for other people's belief. Religion is intolerant; the more religious, the more intolerant. Intolerance may not be tolerated.
All chains of cause and effect start and end with mystery. There is always more than what than facts and science can reveal. Leave it at that. Mystery is liberating. Imagine a totally understood and predictable world. It would be a conceptual prison.