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.

Opinion: Faith, Fate and Evil-Terror in New Hampshire

Kimberly Cates was a 42-year-old nurse with a husband and a precious 11-year-old daughter. They lived in a quaint New England hamlet called Mt. Vernon. On October 3, 2009, with her husband out of town on business, she and her daughter went to bed as they had done every night previously. Tonight, however, would not end up like any other night.

Four teenaged boys are under arrest for one of the most terrifying crimes I have seen in my lifetime. Steven Spader, 17, Christopher Gribble, 19, William Marks, 18, and Quinn Glover, 17 , are accused of breaking into the Cates' home, mutilating Kimberly Cates to death with knives and a machete, and then, in an act that defies any type of human thought or emotion, slashing the throat of a sweet, innocent 11 year-old girl. What makes this horror story so terrifying is this: the four allegedly planned to pick a house at random, and kill whoever was home. They planned to end a life, or lives, at random, for no other reason than, well, because they wanted to.

Callers into talk radio all had ideas about how this was preventable. One caller said if they had only been involved with some other types of activities. Two of the four were members of their schools drama clubs. Another caller chimed in with it would not have happened if the boys were involved with the boy scouts. At least one was an eagle scout, another, a boy scout. Another caller states the fact that a church upbringing would have prevented this. One of the teens was preparing to do his Mormon missionary service. Well, maybe, said yet another caller, if there was more discipline in their lives. One was a military cadet. Another caller blamed the parents. One of the boys was undergoing counseling and on anti-depressants.

The fact of the matter is this; there is no way of telling for sure who is a vicious killer and who is just going through a phase of teen-aged awkwardness. The one thing that is for sure is this simple fact; the people who committed this crime are simply evil. That is the undisputable truth. Evil exists in our world. It always has, and, odds are, always will. Even in the Christian bible, evil existed in the most perfect place on earth. It is inescapable. Humanity has two belief mechanisms to help explain, or maybe just deal, with the existence of evil; fate and faith.

Fate is the belief that all of life’s events are somehow pre-determined. While an individual can make choices, in the end, what was meant to be will be. Nothing is capable of changing fate. That is why, the argument goes, someone can fall out of a 10-story building and not get hurt, yet someone else will die from a paper cut.

Faith is the belief that a god, or whatever the person, place or thing that you have faith in, will help you prevail through all. Faith is the reason why people will do things that even they know are foolish, futile, or downright dangerous; logic ceases to exist, faith will get them through.

Kimberly Cates had faith in her security system. Now she is a victim of murder. Her daughter, as of earlier today, is out of intensive care, but will carry the physical scars around her neck for years to come. She will suffer the emotional scars forever, but I think this little girl will somehow make it. After all, at 4:20 a.m., with her throat slashed and a broken leg, she had the wherewithal to call 911 for help. I hope that if I am ever in a crisis that severe, I will be as brave and mature as that little girl. Now excuse me. I have to go lock my windows and doors.