Religion

I have been told that there is a landmass between North America and Antarctica. I have never been there, but I have been informed that it exists. I have never seen it, but people claim to have seen it or know someone who has seen it. However, I have yet to see any concrete proof that it does exist. It's on a lot of maps? A conspiracy of cartographers, I would say.* Oceanic currents work well with it in place? Perhaps the models are wrong. Just look at Copernicus and Ptolemy.

As you're probably thinking, all that was utter nonsense. Just because we can't concretely prove the existence of something doesn't mean we shouldn't believe it to be true. In fact, how can we prove anything? How do we know that our senses aren't deceiving us? Why not just assume nothing exists? The problem with that is that there would be no point to this reasoning -- you're stuck here, so you might as well make assumptions about your surroundings.**

Furthermore, at one point you do need to take some sort of leap of faith. Tell me, what caused the universe? A black hole from another universe? An experiment by some extra-dimensional species? The collapse of another universe? But what created that? More of the same? Is it an infinite cycle? But then how are you supposed to know this? What line of thought caused you to come up with that? In the end, it ends up pointing to a leap of faith.

In addition, I would like to consider the following: There is an object, millions upon millions of miles away, that is somehow pulling us towards it. There are no strings, no suction force, no nothing. It is just its mere presence that is forcing us in its direction. Newtonian gravity, you say. Everyone's heard of it. Yet stop to think of it for a second. It seems absurd for an object to affect another object without directly affecting it.*** And relativity is even more absurd -- time slowing down, objects shrinking? Yet almost everyone agrees that it is true without second-guessing it. So why should we automatically reject other things just on the grounds of absurdity? Considering that we accept absurd things already, it seems odd to use it as an argument against something.

You may have noticed that so far, I have yet to mention the words "god" or "religion" or "supreme being" or whatnot. There is a good reason for this -- somehow when a person starts talking in defense of one particular sect, then all credibility gets thrown out the window, no matter how logical the argument is. This is probably because of the 0.1% of the population that shout from street corners. So, I'd like you to do a favor -- please don't assume my arguments are junk because it's about religion. If 1000 people went to street corners and shouted "Believe in South America," you aren't about to reject the existence of it just because of a bunch of loud-mouthed people, so why do so with religion?

The first thing that I'd like to make clear is that I am a Methodist. That is, I do not believe in many of the Roman Catholic traditions.**** We do not have a pope, we do not have saints (at least not in the same way), we do not call Crusades, and we have much less of a hierarchy. Rather, many Protestant sects believe that all one needs to do is accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. All that one needs to do is shown in the Bible, and primarily the Gospels -- that is, the sayings of Jesus, and not a politically-motivated figure a thousand years after the fact.

Now, I have heard a lot of people ask why I can trust the Bible, which in itself was written and translated and whose books were selected by humans, or why I believe in Christianity in the first place. While there are some logical reasons,***** it also brings into play that "leap of faith" that I had talked about earlier. You have to believe in something,****** and I feel that in my case, various experiences in my life has pointed me in the direction of my current beliefs.*******

One other pet peeve that I have is the claim that religion is bad because it inhibits science or that one can be ethical without being religious. The issue with this is that it's missing the point of religion entirely. The reason why I am a Christian is because I believe that it will get me into Heaven. The same applies to everyone else who is actively a Christian. Religion does not exist to make the world the best place possible. It exists to prepare the way for the afterlife. It's like saying that food is bad because it takes up land that could be used for buildings. While it's technically true, it's not taking into account that people use food for survival, not for land usage.

Obviously, this is not supposed to be an exhaustive list of arguments. Furthermore, I did not write this to try to convert people to Methodism. Rather, I feel that certain types of people have been attempting to further the cause of atheism by using unsound logical arguments and for the most part have gotten away with it. Yet I feel like that once in a while, people should be able to hear from a side that has been rather outspoken -- those who are logical yet have faith in God. And no, they don't contradict.

*I know, that was supposed to refer to England. But since I define the country I was born in to be England, that doesn't really work now, does it?
**Plus, as one person demonstrated this afternoon, solipsism turns you into an absolute prick, and I don't think anyone wants to see that happen.
***Thanks to David English for the gravity analogy.
****I should make clear that I don't think people should be Catholic, but rather I feel that several of their traditions are superfluous. After all, we have the same single basic fundamental principle.
*****I'd like to refer you to Jeff's column for details.
******In this case, "no god" is technically an option, but unless you can provide answers about your "belief" in the same way that the average religious person can, I still consider you agnostic. Perhaps that will be explained later.
*******For the record, my dad is Southern Baptist and my mom was Anglican. My faith is not entirely because that's what my parents did, it's because of what has happened to me throughout my life.

Addendum: I would suggest that everyone read this article. If we could all agree on those things, there would be a lot less shouting.