When someone says they don’t believe in God, I always wonder what they don’t believe in. (of course, the same goes for those that say they believe in God!) After all, it’s not like there is a definition of God agreed upon by everyone, and whether you buy into Him or not, there has to be some concept there!
Well, I don’t believe in a God that behaves like a human as is so often portrayed in the Bible, where he makes man susceptible to temptation and then curses him for succumbing, or is having a wager with the devil or, in his disgust with the disobedience of his own creation, sends a flood to destroy everything. To me, that God is but a figment of the material or carnal man’s imagination in its effort to explain material existence, and it is worse than useless, for it serves to bind man in a state of fear and guilt. In the Bible, it correlates with the Old Covenant, which the prophet acknowledges, did not work very well.
But what of a God that is good, universal, perfect, infinite, with whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning? We get glimpses of this God in the Old Testament, but a much clearer view in the New. Just like the principles of mathematics, these concepts are not the creations of man, but rather are discovered by man. Instead of binding man, they expand thought and release him from fear and guilt. In the Bible it correlates with the New Covenant, where men will no longer be telling each other how to think, for they shall all know God from the least unto the greatest, and all their mistakes will be forgotten. This is not an explanation of material existence, but a release from it, or perhaps an ascension out of it!