The God Effect

I have a friend on Facebook who is a devout Christian. Most of her posts mention her faith in God in some way, shapes, or form. She will often mention how God "helped" her deal with some problem or situation in her life. One day, as I sat staring blankly at my Facebook, I started contemplating my own thoughts about God.

I was born into a strict Catholic family. Hell, my grandparents’ names Joseph and Maria. I had uncles named Peter and John. As most Catholic children, I went to CCD classes. Then one day, I made a very tragic mistake. I started reading the bible.

At the ripe old age of eight, I one day asked my priest if I could ask him some questions about what I read. He obliged. I asked, "Is it true that as Catholics, we consider ourselves Christians?" He said, "Yes we do, my son". I asked, "Being Christians are we not supposed to follow the teachings of Christ?" Again, he replied, "Yes we do, my son". Then I asked, "Well, in the Gospel according to St. Matthew Jesus said we should not call one another Father or Rabbi, yet we call you Father. Why is that?" I received a cold, blank stare. "What is your mother's phone number?" was his reply.

When the priest told my mother why she was to "...never bring him back here again", she flipped. How could the Church deny a child the right to ask questions? Is not that the way one learns? My mother became the first member of her family to leave the Catholic Church.

That was a long time ago. As I sit here today, writing this story, I find myself thinking about God again. Do I even really believe there is a God? When I look around at the beauty and wonder in nature, I know that the delicate order of nature had to have some kind of energy behind its creation.

Scientists have long said that our Solar System formed when a mass of matter exploded. This explosion then hurtled these orbs of rock into gravitational orbits around each other. That raises two questions for me. First, where did the mass of material come from? More importantly, what was the source of the energy that caused the explosion? Could God be just a mass of energy?


The human mind is a wonderfully mysterious thing. Man's capacity to learn seems boundless. Yet we cannot comprehend the concept of eternity. Our minds work on the finite; everything has to have a beginning and an end. I believe it is because of this limitation that the concept of a "human-like" God came to be. I think that, because of the human mind's incapacity to grasp the concept of eternity, it was necessary to create an all-powerful being that would be the answer to all the unexplainable mysteries of life.

They refer to it as "The God Effect". How did this amazing order in the universe get here? God made it. Why is the human body such a delicately constructed organism? God made it. Why do good people get sick and die? God wants them by his side. Why do bad people get sick and die? God is punishing them. How will I get through my latest crisis? God will help me.

I have dealt with one crisis after another in my life. I always managed to make it through. I used the power of my brain to assess the situation, find out all the options available to me, and select, then enact, a course of action. God did not do any of that. It was my will and my strength of character that got me through. I dealt with my problems on my own.

Let us turn back to my friend. "God helped me to___”. She honestly believes that. They call it faith. Faith is a belief in something that, basically, you have no empirical evidence supporting belief in. If you ask a believer why they believe in God, they will say because the bible says to. However, men wrote the bible. They will argue that the men were divinely inspired. Who said they were? The men who wrote the bible say they were. Common sense would dictate that the bible amounts to little more than good literature. Small-minded men created the concept of a greater god to placate their need to understand the incomprehensible.

When a person is sick, they go to a doctor to get medicine. Sometimes a doctor will give a patient a placebo. It is an inert substance; it does nothing. However, if the patient believes it will work, they often start feeling better. It is the power of their mind over matter that heals them, not the placebo. It is the belief that it will help that causes the healing.

I guess then, God, by practical definition, is just a placebo.

Einstein and God

The purpose of this blog is to encourage people to think for themselves, and not to accept as fact everything they see and hear. I use the word lemmings to describe these people; they follow blindly without questioning. I see articles, videos, and news items daily that spout alleged facts. I hear, or participate in, conversations where I hear unfounded assertions. This blog’s purpose is not to persuade you one way or another; it is to encourage you to research things for yourself. I sincerely hope you enjoy my blog.-Pete

A friend of mine on Face book recently posted a video named "Does God exist?” Of course, this question has been, and will be, debated forever. This is a good example of the purpose for my blog-a place to get people to research things for themselves.

The video is supposedly "a true story". Lemmings will take this as the truth, without question. The video shows a young Albert Einstein disagreeing with his instructor's statement that "If God exist, he is evil". Einstein points out, using laws of physics, that cold, dark, and evil do not exist; they are merely the absence of the opposite. Then young Einstein makes a statement about "...God's love in their hearts". This is where all credibility ceases to exist. The insinuation of the video is that Einstein believed in God as a loving being. This is simply a lie. Unlike the video, I will cite actual quotations, with references. You can then decide for your selves.

The first quote is from Einstein's response to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein's question "Do you believe in God?” Einstein replied "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings” (Stenger, 2003).

Einstein was labeled an Atheist based on comments like this one:
"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death" (Einstein, 1930)

In response to this labeling, Einstein responded:
"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God" (Jammer, 1999).

The video only claims that this is a true story, yet offers no references.I have provided you with quotes from Einstein himself. It is up to you to decide where the credibility lies.I will not say what I believe. My belief is irrelevant. I am just trying to encourage you to question and research things for yourself. That is the purpose of my blog. Remember, the truth is out there…you just have to look for it.

References

Einstein, A. (1930, November 9,). Religion and Science . New York Times Magazine .

Jammer, M. (1999). Einstein and Religion. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Stenger, V. (2003). Has Science Found God? Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus.