An Impartial Consideration of God, Offered in the Form of Eleven Questions and Eleven Answers

By Michael Collins Morton
1. Is there actually a God?

That question has never been, and probably never will be, answered with any degree of certainty on this side of the eternal void, but the common evidence seen within our human experience appears to strongly betoken the unmistakable likelihood of a God, regardless of whether we are fully disposed to accept such a likelihood or not.

2. Is there actually a heaven and a hell?

As with the question of God, the question of heaven and hell is an exceedingly difficult question, with no definitive answer currently forthcoming, but one thing, at least, seems readily apparent: any presumption of heaven is, necessarily, dependent on an equivalent presumption of hell, and vice versa.

3. Which of the brands of religion approved by convention provides the most effective path to discerning, accessing, and comprehending the truth of God?

The answer to that question is, quite clearly, an awkward matter of divided opinion and heated disputes, with every brand of religion being given to making false avowals, hollow declarations, unfounded assurances, and specious promises.

4. Is belief in God best achieved through faith or through reason?

Belief in God achieved through faith of a shallow, guileless description is generally sufficient for most believers, but approaching God by means of reason, underpinned by an honest element of rational, open-minded doubt, is more reliable.

5. Is praying to God a worthwhile activity?

Direct appeals to God may, or may not, serve to bring hopes, wishes, yearnings, longings, and desires to manifest fruition, but as is the case when someone who is stranded on a desert island desperately throws a bottle containing a written plea for rescue into the ocean, there is no harm in trying.

6. If God is perfect and benevolent and all-powerful, and always in total control of all happenings everywhere, why is the world subject to widespread conditions of violence, corruption, and suffering?

It could be that God, as the chief deity of a busy cosmos, is too heavily engaged with an overwhelming number of essential duties to be concerned with the lesser demands of worldly housekeeping, leaving the human species to contend, as best it can, with the inevitable harm caused by its own wanton pattern of incorrigible wrongdoing.

7. Was humankind created by God, or was God created by humankind?

It is patently useless to waste one's thoughts in conjecturing along those lines, in much the same way as it is useless to ask, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

8. How believable is it that God would enable the evil, murderous intentions of any nation that deliberately starts a war against another nation, resulting in wholesale destruction and scores of civilian casualties?

Not believable at all.

9. Should any person claiming to possess an absolute understanding of "God's will" be trusted?

Only if one is eager to be brazenly exploited and played for a fool.

10. Can the unfathomable question of God be easily dismissed?

It can, perhaps, be easily dismissed in the short term, but in the long term, it cannot be completely avoided.

11. Is a hard, narrow, unyielding, self-satisfied denial of God advisable as a chosen outlook on life?

No.

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