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If There Were No Belief in the Supernatural, Would Belief In a God Still Exist?

Leland W. Ruble

“Everyone starts out being an atheist. No one is born with belief in anything. Infants are atheists until they are indoctrinated.” —Andy Rooney (1919-)

As far back in ancient times, religion has always been associated with the supernatural. God(s) have always been associated with the supernatural. God is perceived as some mysterious, omnipotent supernatural being. In the Bible, most of the events depicted are associated, not with factual evidence, but with descriptions of events that could only occur supernaturally, not naturally. In fact, not only the Bible, but all holy books are based on a supernatural explanation of existence.

There is no contrary evidence to suggest that any of the gods worshiped by the various religions are anything but creatures of a supernatural reality. These gods are incapable of existing in the natural environment that we physically inhabit. The supernatural does not exist. There currently is no scientific evidence for the establishment of a supernatural reality. Therefore, if the supernatural does not exist, neither can a god, devil, demons, angels, heaven, hell, miracles, or any other phenomenon associated with the supernatural, exist.

The dictionary defines the word supernatural as: 1. Of relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially: of or relating to God or a god, demon, spirit, or devil. 2 a: Departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature, and b. attributed to an invisible agent (as a ghost or spirit).

We are wrongly and consistently informed by the religious apologists that the living, breathing god of the Old and New Testament was in spiritual contact with the authors responsible for writing the absurd nonsense in the Bible. These authors could never have been in communication with a god, mainly because there is no known evidence for a god’s existence. Those who seriously entertain and believe in the mythical tales of the Bible, likewise believe in the concocted delusion that its authors possessed supernatural evidence for the existence of their god. This is a total farce and travesty. The bible is the work of authors who truly believed in a supernatural reality. They could not prove their claims for the supernatural, they just assumed that by believing it existed, faith is all that was required for asserting the belief that a god existed in this unnatural environment separate from the physical reality we can consciously perceive. A reality that defies all common sense and the actual perception of what is and is not real.

There are many, religious and otherwise, who claim the supernatural is a reality. Psychics, spiritualists, etc., may not necessarily be religious but they falsely believe their powers of perception are due to supernatural causes. On the other hand, many god-believers, for instance those who practice faith healing, like the religious quack Benny Hinn, have become enormously wealthy by deceptively tricking his audience of bedeviled god worshipers into believing he has the supernatural ability to cure them of a physical illness. Benny Hinn, like all past and present faith healers, including those associated with the religion of Christian Science, is an extreme example of a man who uses his irrational religious beliefs to promote a depraved insane perception that his nonexistent abilities are due to his  fanatic relation with the god of the Bible.

It’s most likely that in the remote pass, priests of god-belief were well aware they could not prove their god was anything more than a figment of their deranged imaginations. However, to convince the public that their gods were real, they explained away their inability to produce an actual god by claiming this god existed in a mysterious supernatural realm that only those chosen by this god, or who truly believed in this god, could and would eventually be known to them simply by believing it existed on the basis of faith alone. The same applies to the leaders of modern religions. They can’t physically produce an actual god, but make claims that it exists spiritually in a supernatural realm. They tell their congregations that god exists, but the only way to know this god is spiritually. Which is the same as saying, you can discard your sense of reality and this god will make its presence known. Also you must be indoctrinated to believe you have a spirit (soul?) that is capable of becoming conscious of things that exist in the realm of the supernatural.

There has never been any need for the apologists of religious absurdity to present physical evidence for the existence of a god. It was simply enough to state that belief was all that was necessary to establish the concept of an existing god. If a scientist made a similar claim about some ludicrous  theory that he knew little red and green men lived on the Moon, and all that was required to believe this was to suspend one’s sense of reality, few would accept such a nonsensical theory without evidence.

In this the twenty first century, believers in godism are still living as individuals so indoctrinated in one religion or another, that they are reluctant to examine the basis of their beliefs and the reality that the source for the supernatural has never been established as factual.

This deception—believing in the existence of a god—has been hammered so long into the heads of so many, that it still manages to sway countless individuals into a belief in the unnatural aspect of a supernatural god. In some religious denominations the deception of belief is so strong, that many resort to horrible acts of violence under the false delusion that what they do, is done in the service of their mythical imaginary god.

One of the reasons for fanatic religious opposition to stem-cell research, abortion, and other advancements in medical research that conflicts with religious belief, is the quack notion that because a supernatural god is the cause for existence, humanity has no right to replace this god with human endeavors that weaken or disestablish the concept of a god. The truth is that no medical  research that has benefited civilization, has been accomplished by reliance on the supernatural for research that has solved  numerous causes of certain diseases, illness, and  other issues that have been of benefit to the welfare of civilization. It is scientific and medical research that has contributed to the general welfare of all life on this planet. The one exception is the human inclination to create destructive weapons of war.  There is also the  neglect of this planet’s environment. These issues and others, including religious fanaticism, has restrained humanity from achieving a truly humanistic, secular civilization.

If humanity were to rely, as some fanatic god-believers suggest, on the supernatural interference of a god to resolve issues, we might as well live in the Dark Ages when the Christian religion dominated society, and all issues concerning disease, sanitation, warfare, etc., were resolved solely on the reliance of prayer and nearly total reliance on the imagined intervention of a supernatural god. Precisely what the religious fundamentalists in the USA are motivated to achieve with their constant deranged interference in the politics of this nation.

As long as the religious cannot prove the supernatural exists, they cannot affirm the existence of a god. They can say one exists, but they have no evidence to prove their claim. No matter how many theologians of the various religions claim—that we exist in both a natural and supernatural universe—their claims are the stuff of quackery and delusion.

Religions are the result of human fantasy, of fabulous claims based on nothing more than the imagination and devious aspirations of a priestly class whose ambitions are and always have been, absolute domination over society.

If the public were to perceive the clergy as supernatural moralists preaching a false perception of existence, and not as men and women in possession of some formidable truth, we would all be better off as a result.

When one considers, for instance, the absurd comment of the current pope while visiting Africa, that the use of condoms resulted in more people susceptible to HIV and AIDS, his comment was not the proclamation of a man in total control of his mental faculties. It was the blabber of a man mentally drowning in a mentality that has been so flooded with images of an unreal supernatural reality that he can no longer think rationally or sanely. His comment should be condemned as the preposterous utterance of a man whose words and attitude resemble someone living in a surrealistic world disconnected from reality.

When certain individuals throughout history, and in this present era, claim they have visitations of a Holy Mary or some other supernatural religious experience, they are self-hallucinating. They are believing what their minds have imagined to be there, not what is actually there. When others like Tim LaHaye, Pastor John Hagee, and others, write books or comment on the “End Times” based on their faulty and delusional understanding of the book of Revelation, they are likewise self-hallucinating, and even, in some circumstances, hoping to become immensely wealthy from publishing quackery based on their distorted understanding of reality.

In summation, all religions are supernatural in origin. And since the supernatural cannot be proven to exist,  neither can a god, a supernatural Jesus, or any other symbol associated with religious belief. It is all quackery! There is no god. There is no heaven and hell, and once you’re dead, you’re dead. After death there will be no Saint Peter, an angelic choir of fluttering angels, or told you deserve to exist for all eternity in either heaven or hell. What exists after death, is death.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.