I suppose I believe in God. I certainly worry about the problem, whether or not I doubt the existence of a benevolent creator, or the nature of same- prime mover and absentee land lord or perhaps low-key meddler in our lives, as seems more likely. Do I think we have proof of God, of the divine? Hard to say. I'm not a creationist and I understand, dimly, statistics, so that I know that unlikely things happen all the time; unless something is impossible, the improbable does tend to happen, too. Self-assembly of proteins into living things is one of those improbable things that awes me, when I stop to think about it.
I worry about the problem of pain, and what it means for an omnipotent, omniscient, creator. Terry Pratchett has written, in the Patricians' words, that if God exists, he or she knows evil, as in an inherent cruelty in the nature of the world, and that it is our duty to become God's moral superior. I ask, 'Why does God want us to worship her?! Free will just so's she can have an ego trip?' Is God perhaps a little sick, that he or she enjoys our pain? But other things do cause me to believe in providence, that we can make a good life for ourselves, so here's what I believe in a nutshell- that something there is which is greater than ourselves, outside of ourselves and between each of us, that loves us enough to provide a wonderful, terrifying and awesome universe for us to explore and use. That we are the universe coming to know itself and that the divine is in each of us, in a falling leaf or a baby's smile. That we are creation and destruction, apathy and energy, wisdom and stupidity, all in one walking, talking, willful package. And that's kind of neat.
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