Why I believe in God

When people try and convince me that God doesn't exist, it'd be about as effective as trying to convince me that they don't exist when they're just standing there in front of me, arguing about it. They can show me documents and make arguments that can't be argued against that shows beyond any reasonable doubt that they don't exist and I can listen too them and look at their proof and think, "Hey, wow, that's a good point: it totally makes sense that you don't exist." But I'll still have a hard time believing it. Not when you're standing right there, and I can see you and touch you and smell you and hear you, and you're real to me as the sun is real to me and my friends are real to me and trees are real to me and the food I eat and the air I breath is real to me.

You can convince me that what I've always believed to be your nature is wrong, that I've been deceived; I thought you were one thing, you might convince me that you're something else. But you'd have a hard time convincing me that you don't and never have existed. You might say, "It's all self-delusion," but if you can convince me that God is self-delusion, than you can also convince me that the heat of the sun is self-delusion, and the air I breath is self-delusion, the food I eat is self-delusion and my very existence is self-delusion, and that you don't exist even when you're standing in front of me and arguing to me about it. God isn't just an idea to me, a concept that can be argued about, an opinion; He is as real to me as touch and sight and smell and taste and sound. No, I don't see God as a person in human form standing in front of me, arguing with me; but I do see him in everything I see; like the World shimmers like a curtain and behind it all there is God. And no, the World doesn't really shimmer, that's just a metaphor. But it's like that. I don't mean having "a spiritual experience"; I might get those from time to time but I can also get a similar experience by eating an extremely hot curry. It's more substantial than that. Like I can taste God.

The truth is; those things, the sun and the air and food and people and everything I can see, smell and touch? I have less faith in the existence of those things than you might imagine; if there's anything I've learned in my short 23 years of existence, it's that nothing can be taken for granted. I might be insane. I believe I know the difference between reality and fantasy as much as a sane person does, but I cannot rely on my own opinion on this matter; you can always ask my friends, although they might be insane, too. Maybe nothing is real, that it is all an illusion. It'd be hard to live life believing that all experience is nothing but an illusion, although I suppose it's possible; I'm just saying that God is as real to me as those things are. The nature of God, the little details I believe in; about heaven and hell, if God is a woman, if animals have souls, even how I should understand the bible; it is worth arguing with me about. I don't believe the same things about God as I did as a child. But try and tell me that God isn't real at all? Show me all the proof you want, you might think I'm being unreasonable, stubbornly blinding myself to logical arguments that are staring me in the face. Those are all well and good, but all the while you're arguing with me about it, it's like God is standing behind you and winking at me.

I don't know why I bothered writing this, though, as people who don't already understand this will think this is just another practice in self-delusion. Even as I'm writing it, I'm wondering the same, seriously considering whether this is just an attempt to deceive myself. But the conclusion I come up with is that if it is, then the sensation of touch that the nerves on my fingertips are sending to my brain as I tap the keys on my keyboard might also be a self-delusion, and then it doesn't really matter as you will never even have read this since I never wrote it in the first place.

My faith in God isn't perfect, though. I remember one sleep-deprived night, lying in the backseat of the car on the way back from a long trip, when I truly convinced myself that I don't and never have existed. After half an hour of napping and waking up again, I realised that what I had believed only moments ago was absurd, but that's also my faith in God; it's about as strong as my faith in my own existence, and my own sanity, and those are things I've been known to doubt about.