Alex’s Heresies – embracing a physical reality

I received the following letter:

hi,
i was reading your blog, and i highly disagree with your god vs. santa first of all santa is faux and god is a very wonderful and real thing. You may belive what you wnat o to byt a wise man once said he who belives will live eternally in a pkace of gold and wonders with me. Heavens roads are made of gold and youll never thirst again for i am all you need.I dont think your quote to ponder is corect either. It hurts me when people don understaind christ, do me a favor and research god then see what you think. Because whether you like it or not god loves you more than you could imagine.
Fel than emptiness in you, its the hole that can never be filled without jesus.
Thanks,
Aynonomous

The more I think about the language of religious believers and those of non-believers, the more I realise that we perceive vastly different realities or world-views and, essentially, do not share the same language. I discussed these issues during my recent ‘Problem of Evil’ course at CAE in Melbourne. We listened to debates between intelligent, caring people who presented views of the world that were diametrically opposed. Religious people talked of a superior reality with God that framed Earthly suffering as a challenge of understanding God’s will. Naturalists (and atheists) spoke of the superfluous nature of God in explaining the extensive, indiscriminate nature of pain and suffering in our physical world.

The writer, quite naturally, tells me to research his God with the implication that I shall know his God. But my God is the philosophers’ God – an intellectual concept that can be analysed and criticised. I do not get the religious experience that is of primary interest to the writer. I even suspect my very reasonable intellectual understanding of the Christian scriptures and early Christian history would mean little to him. Ultimately I don’t see what he does. Of course it is easy, perhaps all too easy,  for me and fellow atheists to retort how can we as it doesn’t exist!

Alex McCullie