…Geoff Gallop asks in the West Australian today.
I see 2 possible answers to the question :
1. Who ?
2. No.
“God” means a lot of things to different people, from a vague philosophical concept to an old guy with a beard, to what Hitchens calls a celestial dictator, who controls our every move and thought.So there is not much point in phrasing the question like this, because we don’t actually get to know what he means by “god”.
When taken as meaning “Is some concept of god important to some people”, then obviously the answer has to be yes, but does god matter, as in, is a god required for us to be here, would we not be here without some god entity creating us and everything around us, then the answer is a resounding “No”.The universe, all other universes and everything in it is here because of chance and Physics, no god being is required.Our galaxy is on a collision course with Andromeda, again, by chance and Physics, no god will come to our rescue and deviate the Milky Way’s course.
Gallop wrote his post partially in response to Georgie Pell’s incoherent rant against non-believers from the weekend :
According to Archbishop George Pell people who don’t believe in God have a life without purpose and without constraints.
“Without God”, he said at a weekend mass at Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral, “the universe has no objective purpose or meaning”. The more people lose faith, the more society will become “coarse and uncaring”.
Well, Georgie knows of course that our lives have no intrinsic purpose, and that we are the ones who have to fill it with such, but as a snakeoil salesman for one of the biggest sham purpose outfits in history, that’s what he has to say.And I always laugh when I think of a comparison between, say, the mainly atheistic society of Sweden, and the christian society in say, the USA.Go and compare the murder rates, Georgie.Talk about “coarse and uncaring”.It’s the desparate defense of the snakeoil salesmen who feel that people are on to them and their sham.
I have never understood how and why a morality and order derived from the threat of eternal damnation and hellfire is supposed to be superior to one derived from secular humanism and people just doing good things and not doing bad things because it’s the right thing to do, not because they fear some celestial being’s wrath.
