As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I was questioning religion (but not yet a committed atheist), I realized that my religious beliefs were inextricably tied to my upbringing.  If I’d been born to Sikh parents, I’d have been a Sikh.  If I’d been born to Jewish parents, I’d have been a Jew.  But I was born to (vaguely) Lutheran parents, so I was a Lutheran.  And so, for a long time, I assumed that this god was the “right” god.  But why?  What reason did I have to believe it?  I could say, “I just believe,” but then, Muslims could say the same thing about their god.  Hell, Mormons all say they “know” Joseph Smith was the prophet and that their church is “true.”  What made me right and them wrong?

The conflict deepened shortly after I began giving that matter serious thought.  I knew that god had at least one major requirement: belief.  This scared me.  I wanted to believe.  I wanted so badly to just BELIEVE!  I wanted the sureness and confidence that I saw in other believers.  I wanted to rest easy knowing that I believed and that I’d get an all-access pass from St. Peter when I died.  I told myself I could pray, study, think, be good and do good, say outwardly and tell myself inwardly that I believed.

But then I realized that god is omniscient.  No matter what I told myself or others, an omniscient god would know what I believed in my heart of hearts, even if I didn’t.  So I confronted myself.  I asked myself, “Do I believe in god?”  The answer was simple: “No.”  I didn’t.  I knew I didn’t.  I wanted to, but I couldn’t help the fact that I did not believe in god.  I had no choice — my brain said no, there is no god.  No matter how much I wanted the opposite to be true, it wasn’t.  And if I was going to be honest with myself, I had to admit that.  And I realized that if there is an omniscient, omnipotent god, and if he would condemn me for not believing in him, then I wanted no part of his heaven because he made no damn sense and was a hateful bully.

I’ve been revisiting this idea lately, along with the notion of free will.  Most people who believe in god also believe they have free will (Calvinists, you’re exempt from this one).  My question to them is this: If god is all-knowing and all-powerful, how do you have free will?  If god “has a plan,” how do you have free will?  Why would god grant free will only to provide hell as the consequence for not believing what he said to believe?  How is that free will?  “It’s up to you to decide whether you believe in me.  But if you don’t, you’re going to burn for all eternity.”  What kind of an option is that?

And if you can somehow reconcile the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent god with the idea of free will, why do you pray?  If god already knows your thoughts, why do you have to express them?  (I understand that many believers will say prayer for them is akin to writing in a journal — they don’t expect an answer; it just helps them get out of their own heads and express their thoughts and admit powerlessness in certain situations.)  For people who pray and expect or hope for help or intervention, I ask why they think they’re worthy of said help or intervention.  Certainly many of the people who died in Hurricane Katrina were devout and prayed to be spared but drowned anyway.  Certainly there are millions of people everywhere, right now, in pain and dying, who are praying but who aren’t helped by any god.  So why would god answer your prayers and not theirs?

All these questions are valid, I think, but they are sub-questions.  I want to ask believers two main questions:

1. Why do you believe in god?

2. Why do you believe in your particular god (e.g., the Christian god)?

I don’t know if anyone will answer here, but hopefully a few people who do believe in god will at least think about them on their own.  And if anyone does want to talk about them/answer them, please feel free to comment your heart out.  I’m very curious as to how people answer those questions.