God and Rational Thinking

I don’t too often see myself as any great paragon of rational thinking. My thought patterns are generally fun-based. I usually think of things in the manner that allows me the highest level of cognitive amusement. But every once in a while I display some actual analytical thought.

A few days ago I was talking to a friend and coworker who was shot while driving near a tough, gang-infested neighborhood. He was an innocent bystander if ever there were one. The bullet passed through the side of the car door and struck him in the midsection. He was able to drive to a nearby hospital where he underwent some emergency surgery to stop the internal bleeding. My coworker spent a few days in the hospital and missed about two weeks of work. When he returned he described exactly what happened. He then concluded his story by stating that God had obviously been watching out for him, and had saved his life.

I listened with interest to my friend’s narrative but when he brought God into the mix, my rational thinking went into gear. See, to my way of thinking, if God figured into the near-tragic event, then why didn’t He arrange it so the wayward bullet missed my co-worker entirely? If God’s hand was involved in the whole ordeal, my analysis would be that God was upset with my friend enough to want him wounded, but not so upset as to allow that wound to cause death. Unlike my coworker, I definitely would not thank God because a gunshot wound happened to be non-fatal. If someone were to shoot me in the foot without provocation, would I thank that person for not shooting me in the head? I don't think so. I would hold God to that same standard.

In my attempts to abandon my atheism and again become a theist, it is just that type of objective thinking that gets me into trouble. And I’d love to once again be a Christian, a real Christian, a believer, but I can’t seem to do it. My brain keeps getting in the way and ruining it.

The reality is; there is far more evidence that extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth than there is evidence of a god. There is really no evidence that there is a god, but there are photos of flying saucers, albeit dubious photos. So, logically, if a person is going to believe that there is a god, that person should by all rights also believe in extraterrestrial beings. It has to do with objective thinking, and standards of evidence.

There are a lot of positive things I can say about being an atheist. I don’t have to pray. I don’t take time out to bow to any superior being. I can eat what I want any day of the week, all year around. But I’d make all the required sacrifices if I could be emotionally comforted by a god, even if that god were just imagined. The trouble is; just when I’m making some headway into convincing myself that there really is a god, something comes along and derails all the progress, something like a non-fatal gunshot, and someone’s irrational interpretation of it.