Do You know, or do You believe ?

Do you 'know' or do you 'believe' ?

I've had some flak because of my religious, or actually anti-religious writings in this Blog and elsewhere.

I do not now ask, and have never in the past asked anyone to believe anything I said or wrote.

It is, in fact, the very process of „believing“ which I abhor.

Because believing means accepting somebody else's claims, statements, writings, including my own and accepting these utterances before they have been allowed to make a pit stop in one's brain, so that they may undergo a critical examination prior to their incorporation in one's fully accepted pool of knowledge.

We are asked, for instance, to believe that there is a God, as he is described in the Bible's two Testaments, although neither book presents even a shred of evidence for this claim.

Evidence which could be examined investigated and tested.

No Priest, no Pope, no 'learned' Theologian has ever been able to present any evidence which would allow independent investigation.

Those, who say, they do not need proof of the existence of a God, they simply „know“ that God exists, are surely happy within themselves and, as the saying goes, „God bless them“.

Now there are those who make everything very simple for themselves by the claim that „there is No God“. For this claim they too present no evidence and therefore are in the position that they too have to simply „believe“.

Of course they point to the world and its cruelty and say: 

How could a God allow such to happen ?

This woeful question also is no evidence of the non-existence of God. Because there could, indeed, be a God who, for his own good reasons, would allow this to happen.

The Deists, for instance, have it that there is a creator, a God, but that he is not concerned in the least about his creation. A little like a small boy who grew tired of all his toys, slammed the lid of his toy box and walked away.

Doesn't this „I know“ place the Believers and the Non-believers on the same platform, but shouting into different directions ?

Neither truly „knows“ but both „believe“ that they are correct in their respective assumption.

Somewhere between the Theists, the Deists and the Atheist, there are some who simply say:

„You don't know and You don't know and neither do You know, because that which you „believe“ is truly unknowable. When it comes right down to it, one of you may be right. 

I, however, would not want to place a bet.

Bertstravels

is slowly getting tired of this subject.