Miss Ina

I wouldn't say faith just attracts despondent souls or anything. I wouldn't even say that it's consciously attractive at all.

It makes me wonder why the idea of a God is such a persistent thought for people. I mean, what is it about it that attracts us, that makes nearly every one of us at least debate the notion of a God at some point in our lives, and makes many even devote themselves to it?

I think it's unconsciously comforting to think of yourself as a created subject, a servant of God, or whathaveyou. I mean, in a world created by God, you really only need to consider your actions and decisions in the context of someone else's (God's) rules of morality, and moral dilemmas are much easier to solve if you don't have to think about them too much, right?

Furthermore, if you like Nietzsche (I'm no expert so I apologize to any hardcore Nietzscheans here), God is an idea derived over time from a backward concept of morality, and we need to get rid of it. (From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead—what doesn't Wikipedia have!?)

For someone who has faith, having faith is a supremely noble thing. It is difficult, after all, to put your faith in something that you can't perceive with any of the senses.

For someone who doesn't believe, putting your faith in something you can't perceive is often ludicrous and even a deplorable and cowardly excuse for not claiming responsibility for one's actions and their consequences, depending on that person's particular views.

I'd rather someone tell me I'm wrong for not believing in God and articulate why my beliefs are fallible rather than telling me it requires a leap of faith, but I suppose that fundamentally the two can just never mesh.

Anyway, that was mostly unrelated to the actual thread-starter. As for whether God could be reaching out to me: Reaching out to someone who's already gone past the point of reaching back to him makes absolutely no sense from a purely human, "earthly" perspective. So I guess, if God exists, and he's really perfect and superior and incomprehensible and all that, then that would be something he might do. You'd also assume that he wouldn't be "flicking you off" spitefully, too.

Job sure got flipped off all right, but I can't remember what it was for now. Something about not believing in God enough?

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The word "time" split its husk; poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without his making them, hard, white, imperishable words, and flew to attach themselves to their places in an ode to Time; an immortal ode to Time.
—Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway