I personally don’t think it matters whether a person believes in God or not. If there is one, it exists whether we believe in it or not. The only one in that exchange who is affected by the belief is the believer.
The believer is the source of the belief, so people whose minds can’t imagine a perfect God or a functioning universe will constantly be at odds with nature. They can’t begin to surpass themselves because they can’t understand or believe in themselves. They can not believe that everything was made as it was, regardless of how they believe things were made. Because of this, they can’t think of a way to enhance things. You have to know what’s there to figure out how to make it better, or even if it needs improvement.
So God or nature becomes an excuse for personal failures that are within their power to change, but apparently not within their will…or it would seem so anyway. I personally believe that one’s will is part of one’s power.
On a personal or societal level, to direct things to how they should be, one has to first know (well enough anyway) what is. If one refuses to see what is, they will fail or lead themselves or others into destruction.
Both camps are guilty of leading people to destruction because thusfar, few seem to be willing to face the way things are, including the human imagination and will, or how they relate to each other.
Religious people claim to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, unfathomable God and yet they reduce it to little more than a hatless Santa Claus each time they pray for any purpose but gratitude. Non religious people claim not to believe in God, and instead, reduce the universe to something that should be their hatless Santa Claus every time they hope for anything but what they have earned. So they have a god they believe will part the Red Sea for them. I like to call it the Denial Fairy.
I have a sort of hobby of naming people’s god or at least their anthropos figure by their behavior. One can tell who they really worship by what they do.
Whichever it is though, nature is still what it is, and none of us is smarter than it. Worst case, we can make this tiny rock we infest uninhabitable, but said rock will still orbit the sun until it is consumed by it. So I’m trying to live in peace with my fellow inhabitants unless they don’t want to live in peace with me. If the latter is the case, then it’s on.
Whether I am a child of God or merely a gob of flesh, my life is important to me. I give and receive much love, and for this I am grateful. I live on a planet that has many habitable areas where I could live rather pleasantly for years with nothing but my wits, and should I lose those, my suffering will not be long. I will die of dehydration or exposure, and my body will feed some worms and flies that may someday feed a toad or maybe a fish that may someday feed a bigger fish or maybe even a child. I am a part of the cycle of life, and when that stops, I will be a part of the collection of minerals that make up this universe.
It’s nice to think there may be a God. I don’t presume what it is, if it exists in the ways I can possibly imagine existence, or try to parse its will aside of what is naturally creative and destructive, and the balance between those that sustains life. No book is needed to see this, though reading the ideas of others on the matter helps as a nice springboard for forming one’s own ideas. Everything we need to know, and may instinctively know already is spelled out in flesh and blood…and in trees and stones.
