IS GOD REAL?

Many religions now are engaged with debates like in the Philippines argue who is the true if not the best religion. Only one I do not hear engaging in debate and that is Roman Catholic. Now I had read an article about a debate of a Catholic pastor and famous writer, Rick Warren and a famous atheist named Sam Harris. Now the debate lies on the question: Does God exist?

To start with, the debate was excellent. They tackle lots of topics from God’s existence to Humanity. There are also some intriguing questions that a believer and atheist can ask themselves. I was impress on Sam Harris that he can really defend his argument unlike Rick Warren not so because he is sometimes changing the topics instead of defending. Some of the excellent questions were the following: Do you believe on Creation? Do you think that religiously motivated good works are actually harmful? Is the soul of one person being in jeopardy because he has rejected Jesus Christ? But of course above all is the question Is God real?

One of the better questions that struck me is the question when you are born in a different country will you might different religion or even becoming an atheist? In our present day, we become a Muslim, Catholic or an Atheist because we grew up of it. If we were not baptized as a Catholic during our childhood, do you think we are still a Catholic even up to this time? Maybe not, but what important is that you made your choice of staying on what you believe on not because you were raise as a Catholic or something but because you trust on your belief.

At the end of the debate, I was kind of unsatisfied because I wanted more from the debaters to tackle more deep topics that will intrigued me to asked many things. It was also disappointing that only Rick Warren gave the last thought. And to his last words, I was still displeased, “We’re both betting. He’s betting he’s right. I’m betting my life that Jesus was not a liar. If I’m right, he’s lost everything. I’m not willing to make that gamble”, for belief on one thing is not a gamble. It’s never been that way. Belief is something you trust on and not to think for the sake that you just hold on to so not to lost if it is true.

PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION ON THE PROBLEM OF UNBELIEF

Do you believe in god? Does god exist? If god exists, is he an obstacle to human? These are just some few questions being answered in the history of humanity. We can observe that faith is always included to mans’ business or issues. Yes, it is a great issue in a way it attracts men to debate whether to believe or not.

When we talk about unbelief, we come up with the idea of an atheist. There are the ones who are famous if not the most common example. Most believers think of an atheist as someone not virtuous. They think that being an atheist means living in hell. Likewise, some atheists think that god is a barrier to mans’ life. Who is correct? Well, I can not tell but let’s examine them. Some atheist especially the humanist consider god as a shackle to mans’ improvement by means of thinking that he is the reason why people do this and do that. We lower ourselves to uplift god or he is giving us problems in life to solve rather than enjoying our life.

While some believers think that their faith is firm in a way they do not want to accept the possibility that their belief can be a mistake. They even try to cover up for the mistakes like saying that “error has no rights” or commonly by covering their ears.

Belief is different from knowledge. Knowledge is with certainty there is a period on it while belief is something, by its nature, falsifiable. So we can not say that our belief is strong. Unless we are talking about knowledge not belief for something strong is something that does not need improvement or to further expand but belief must expand to broaden its range.

They are actually different level or types of atheist. We must not be mistaken of who they are for sometimes other atheist are more christianly or more virtuous than us. Is it? Yes, hard to accept but some act manlier than those who are so-called Christians by name. They do good things for other people for the sake of humanity.

We must not take those problems of unbelief negatively instead we must accept it to improve faith or belief for everything has an equivalent doubt. To do this we must first be humble not self-satisfied as they say, “Only those who are humble has the room for progress.”