The sharp retort I received to ``How can you believe in a God?'' was ``How can you not believe in a God? How can you explain our lives and our Universe?'' Of course, this leads directly to the argument that God has been created by man to explain the inexplicable. That busy crossroads has been scrutinised to exhaustion, so I cut my own path through the slithering vines of philosophy. I ask what created that God and I am told ``He just exists.''
My choice of belief comprises only two options:
It is an arbitrary choice that one might or might not feel compelled to justify. I choose option 'b' since I prefer to think that the Universe can be explained by knowledge that is too vast and complex for human minds to understand at this point, or maybe ever. By the mere mysterious nature of God, he can never be understood - and I'd rather have the chance to understand.
However, I could be incorrect. If I am incorrect then the deity I would choose is the compassionate and understanding one who is exalted by all major religions. No compassionate and understanding being will punish me for not believing in something for which I have no evidence. Therefore, whether I am or am not correct, I am at no disadvantage and I am living a charmed life that can only be interrupted by divine signature given directly to me.
I make an analogy:
I am standing with two friends (Dean and Steven) in Steven's kitchen. I reach behind my back and close my fist around a lentil. ``Steve, do you believe that there is a lentil in my hand?'' ``No,'' says Steven. So I show the lentil to Dean and he confirms that there is indeed a lentil in my hand. Steven still believes that my hand is empty but readily admits that he might be incorrect. I open my hand to convert the disbeliever and on closing it again Steven feels he has sufficient evidence to believe in the lentil.
I have yet to see the lentil.
Steven proposed an extension to my analogy:
Dean does not immediately confirm the existence of the lentil to Steven, but one hundred years later Dean's great-grandson confirms to Steven's great-granddaughter that there was indeed a pencil in my hand.
The beauty of God is in the mind and not in the truth. Kurt Gödel's 'incompleteness theorem' (1931) shows that it is always possible to make a statement that denies its own existence. This is the incompleteness of religion: God is sustained by the uncertainty of his own existence.