Is God emotionally dispensable?

Is God emotionally dispensable? This striking question encourages believers to question the importance of God in our lives. The call for atheism challenges man to kill God if man has to live. We must kill God by cutting out the strings that attach us to God via religion. Philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Feuerbach, Bertrand Russell, and Karl Marx offer us humanistic approach proving the unimportance of religion in our very own lives. First, let’s take Nietzsche’s account. According to Nietzsche God was dead and we human beings have killed Him. His atheism is anti-Christian because according to him to proclaim the death of God is to free oneself from weakness and pettiness. We became murderers of God by turning our backs on God and saying no to the virtues and principles God demands. Second, is Ludwig Feuerbach. According to Feuerbach “theology is simply anthropology”. The object of religion which we called God is simply an expression of human essence. His only mission left after being an empiricist is to prove to believers that God is simply an illusion, a projection of the qualities we find in human nature itself. Third, is Sigmund Freud. According to him “religion is the universal neurosis of humanity.” The nostalgia for a Father lies at the origin of our ideas about religion. Fourth, is Bertrand Russel. According to him “the natural sciences, the one and only source of information and knowledge, offer no basis at all for our faith in God. God does not exist because there is no rational explanation for His existence. Fifth, is Karl Marx. The undying line of Marx that religion is the opium of the people tells us that religion makes man insensitive to his sufferings here on earth; divine providence makes man fatalistic and superstitious. Moreover, being chained to God reduces our freedom because we kept on believing in the Christian values that inhibits man to discover goodness and his potentials all by himself. We should replace Christian values with other values that exalt human dignity and upgrade human beings.

On the other hand, I reject some of the teachings of these atheistic philosophers. First, I disagree with their belief that man can live without a God in their life. Perhaps man can still live but it is not a life that is fully human. It doesn’t mean that if we don’t see and feel God therefore He is not there. I can’t say with finality or conclusiveness that God is not there simply because he does not exist. There is still that great probability that he exists from what we read from the scriptures and from our own personal faith. For hundreds of years religion already exists as a way of life, taking it away from one’s life is like stripping one from one’s clothes thus, leaving are naked and defenseless in the face of the earth. When God is dead we live without hope of the promise of salvation, without a Supreme Being where the heart can find its rest, without God there will be chaos and conflict of the moral stand of truth. Religion thus serve as a guide to one’s life. If we strip man away from it, there’ll be no basic standard of morality and truth and there’ll be chaos, for everyone has its own truth claim.

For my case. I can say with all honesty that sometimes I become a practical atheist by not living up to my Christian ideals. There are moments that my prayers, especially the rosary, are made out of obligation or of fear in the notion of hell. No matter how religious I am I also have this habit of gossiping and having pleasure upon hearing the “chismis” of other people. I also have this attitude of lying to cover up my mistakes or when things do not go my way. However, I believe that although bad habits die hard, change is still possible if we open our hearts to Jesus Christ and do away with bad habits as early as we can. (Rizza Mae D. Ferraris)