God is a Fiction

Faith is just a fancy name for opinion.

If I have faith in an opinion that comes from a source external to myself, it's still my opinion, I'm still responsible for it.

The term faith gives opinion a spurious air of sanctity, of mystery.

When I say I've got faith, I mean I've got opinions for which there is no evidence to evaluate their validity.

To say I have faith so proudly is almost as if I am celebrating having no evidence for my opinion, as if that somehow elevates my opinion out of the dirty world of mundane facts.

There follow some questions for Christians about the nature of their God & their religion. If there are satisfactory Christian answers to these questions, I've never heard them. It's to do with / it's an issue of my faith is not a sufficient answer to any of these.

1. Does God intervene in His Creation or not ?

If He doesn't, what is the point of praying to Him for intervention ?

Is He responsible for unwelcome & destructive interventions like earthquakes & other natural disasters ?

What about prayers which are not answered ? Is that God refusing ?


2. When I die, will I go straight to Heaven or Hell ? or - will I lie in the ground until the Last Judgement, & my destination be decided then ?

As far as I can see, Christians believe both at the same time, & both can't be true at the same time.

Or - Heaven, Hell & the Last Judgement are figurative, in which case - what's the point of them ?


3. If the Devil exists, why does God permit him to continue ?

If God cannot do anything about the Devil, then He is not omnipotent.

If God could could do something about him, but chooses not to - why ?


Looked at from a non-Christian perspective, the Devil - or Satan if you prefer - is necessary & indispensable for 2 reasons.

First, because God is a fiction. & any successful fiction requires an antagonist, its disruptor-figure, its supreme opponent e.g. Loki, Sir Kay, Moriarty. Note that archenemy is a term used familiarly in talking about stories, & is also, when capitalised, - Archenemy - a synonym for the Devil.

Second, because the Devil is a personification of something we know from experience to be true, that evil is a real force in the world & in human affairs. You only need to look around you, keep up with the news, & study history to confirm that e.g. events in the world in the 1930s & '40s.