Jim Jeffries, comedian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5TlR0K7ASA
Gets a big laugh out of rubbishing people who believe in God.
But he leaves something out.
The existence or otherwise of God depends on your definition of God.
Self evident. But largely ignored. I’d say about totally ignored in any and all discussions on God/religion.
My God exists without any doubt at all. Because of the definition I have for my God.
I have the same God as the first human being had.
I turn my face towards the same God. I plead with the same God for safety, food, warmth, shelter, happiness, health, good fortune.
And I do it the same way, at the same time.
At times of distress, need, panic, danger, hurt, turmoil, etc…
And I do it instinctively and inchoately.
My being puts out a plea for help, for mercy, for abatement of suffering, for chance to bend my way…..
and it doesn’t specify the target of that plea.
Specification of the target comes later. With reminiscence. With retrospective contemplation of what one has done.
And then begins the construct, the religious construct, the mapping out of the unmappable, the defining of the undefinable, the naming of the unnamable…..
Having sent a message out from the self to something other one in retrospect needs to understand to at least some extent what one was sending a message to.
And we come up with all kinds of explanations and they usually devolve into some kind of supreme being, some kind of ‘divine’ being – a god or gods.
But all those explanations beg the question, they don’t answer it.
We are praying to reality.
We invent those gods after we’ve prayed. Not before. First is the impulse and the act, later is the rationalisation and the con men and the bullshit.
And when we pray in the first instance we are praying to reality. We are asking reality to change itself to suit us. We want circumstances to change, our ‘fortune’ to change. We want changes in physical reality – food to appear, game to be got, crops to be harvested – and changes in the more insubstantial aspects of reality – good ‘luck’ to come, happy coincidences and opportunities etc…
Physically substantial or more ephemeral they’re all changes in reality.
We are talking to, praying to, Reality, and asking it to change. For us.
That’s our God: Reality.
That’s who we pray to: Reality.
That’s where the answers come from: Reality.
That’s my God and my God is real: Reality.