At some point, I ran across an argument along the lines of: “We hunger, and food exists. We thirst, and water exists. We feel horny, and sex is real. We yearn for God, and so I conclude that God exists.”
Now, I can easily pick this apart a bunch of different ways, the easiest one being that just because you want some to exist doesn’t mean that it really exists. But what I’m really hoping for is a couple of counterexamples: something like “Yes, well, we all want a unicorn, too, but unicorns don’t exist.”
This particular one doesn’t work because wanting a unicorn isn’t a universal desire the way food or sex are (even counting asexual people, we can still say that the vast majority of people want sex). But maybe some of you can think of something.
You don’t need a counter example. Reality serves that purpose just fine. Look at how amazing everything is without once in our lives ever hearing, seeing, or witnessing the divine presence of an imaginary omnipotent being.
Sure the world is a terrible place. There is a ton of suffering. A lot of people are unhappy and miserable, but the fact alone that we do exist, that we are capable of observing, learning, growing and interacting with the universe around us is simply no short of remarkable in and of itself.
Why submit yourself to an outdated, antiquated and unproven doctrine of beliefs when there is so much more to know and see in the universe around us? Despite every bad moment in my life, I’d live it all again just for another opportunity to grow and learn with all of you.
We may be powerless, small, insignificant creatures in the large scale of the universe but we are made from the stuff of this universe and our place within it is just as important as everything else that exists alongside us.