If anyone wanted circumstantial evidence for the non-existence of God, it is there in their own synapses.
Buddhists apart, all Gods that have ever been created are covered in the fingerprints of human creativity - there's the one who was given birth to by a mere mortal, there are the ones with the human qualities of vengeance and jealousy, and there are the ones who take an unhealthy interest in our comings and goings.
No, there is nothing there worth worshipping in such a creature, who stands over us like an imposing, admonishing colossus, but a colossus with the same seeds of downfall as the scurrying ants he surveys.
Are we, in the 21st century, supposed to suspend our disbelief to the extent that petitioning a deity could ever have real, measurable results?
Oh, Lord, I am suffering, for someone dear to me has departed and now rests eternally in your kingdom. I throw myself upon your wisdom as I seek not only explanation, but comfort - and, in return, I pledge absolutely nothing. Not only an omniscient God, but a benevolent one, a foolish God providing the ultimate free lunch.
The funeral, and the beautiful words of the charming Reverend Sue; the poetry readings and the committal of the body to Christ; the singing of Abide With Me and the journey to the crematorium on a day when it seemed the whole of nature had come out to say goodbye - crows circling the hearse in respect, and fields of corn bowing in the wind - what greater tribute to the glory of religion could one ever wish for?
And yet, I suspect it's nothing more than a sham, akin to the veneer of civilisation, the result of penetrating which is to fall helplessly out of one's species, to become an outsider. We are not condemned as outsiders when we prick the bubble of religion, but we instead must steel ourselves to look at a universe which is indifferent to the plight of humanity, a plight which is summed up by Reverend Sue: we know and understand 'life's little day.'
A true god should be incomprehensible to us, and be far too un-human to care who dies, and who's in anguish. This sort of entity would be no less than the mechanistic universe itself, creating and destroying stars and galaxies and planets, and meanwhile the inhabitants of thisplanet proselytise and beg for comfort, like children.
