Is there really a God?

THE EDITOR: I have heard it said that Jesuits claim that if they have a child for the first six years of his life, he will be a believer forever — or words to that effect. While I did not have that particular experience, I was incarcerated in a convent for six years from four to ten years old. Given that I remember absolutely nothing before that period, I would say that my situation was at least similar. I sucked in all Roman Catholic teachings as “gospel.” Consequently, I did not develop a mind of my own, and was painfully and ridiculously self-conscious and shy when my mother and sister finally took me home — or out into the world.

I was a loner at school among a lot of rough children, so I would stay inside and read whatever was available. At home it was really only fairy stories, but when I was evacuated from London in WW11 I came across several copies of Dickens, which I immediately fell in love with. Mind you, I read them as simple stories without realising the importance of the real underlying message. The frontispiece in every book said: “Draws old men from the fireplace and children from play,” and I thought, “How true!” It must have been in my mid-teens that religious doubt started creeping in as I read anything and everything I could lay hands on. At first I was horrified I would be hurled into Hell and suffered similar agonies. But the doubt began to double and treble at a rapid rate, but I was still afraid to admit it, even to myself.

Sometime in my early 20s as I became less shy and retiring, I became brave enough to admit it to all and sundry. I was finally convinced that God was dead. I have not changed my mind since then, and now at 78 years old I am no longer afraid of death itself, but hope that I will not suffer the actual dying too much. So now, if you have got this far, I would like to tell you as briefly as possible what conclusions I have come to so far, although they may not be necessarily final, because not being able to get about much now, I am gobbling up more and more books. Is there a God? That depends on what one thinks God is. If one means a super-human magician living up in the sky demanding sacrifice and adoration, then absolutely not.

If however, it is suggested that God is some kind of atom or element or even stardust, then I am ready to listen. I believe in eternal life —something that is indestructible. That death is simply the breakdown of a particular closed system, when vital parts that control the system fail, but the hidden spark of life, or the oil in the machine still exists and is recycled into new life. A reincarnation and redistribution of the seeds of life which were merely on loan. However, what is the I and the Me will no longer be me in any shape, form or ghost, despite the poetic beauty of Nietzsche’s “Ring of Eternity.” I believe there are no such natural values as “good and evil.” Everything just is dependent on prevailing circumstances. Mother Nature’s values are procreation and self-preservation. In fact, exactly what we are seeking today: sexual satisfaction (albeit with the sting of reproduction and responsibility removed) and selfishness. Man made God for social reasons, but now democracy mocks the laws of their acknowledged Creator in the illusory flight to freedom.

M A KERR
Woodbrook