Belief in God, the ubiquitous character-weakness, skilfully masquerading as a virtue. For a mentally-constructed coping mechanism, God has done rather well for Himself, carving out an impressive living over the aeons, playing the role of the ever present imaginary friend for the young of mind. Fear of death and an inability to handle bereavement are the true motivations that compel individuals to accept the existence of God; all else is mere rationalisation. Although having said that, I’m probably being unduly lenient in using a derivative of rational to describe the convoluted mental gymnastics to which believers will frequently resort in their attempts to demonstrate the existence of their beloved watchman in the sky.

Also baffling are the arguments they concoct to excuse the lack of evidence for God’s existence. A popular example is air, which is often used to illustrate the existence of things that cannot be observed; people will say “you cannot see air, yet you know it exists” as if this somehow gives credence to their belief. Of course this is little more than semantic hand-waving; for although we cannot see air, we can nevertheless infer its existence through other means; seeing is not the only way to observe or measure something.

When people say that they do not believe in God because they “cannot see God”, they are not literally making the statement that they don’t believe due to an absence of visible evidence; they are merely using the word ‘see’ as verbal shorthand for sensory inference in general.

So, whilst we cannot see air with our eyes, we can ‘see’ it with, for example, our skin, as we feel it rushing past us on a windy day. God on the other hand, cannot be seen via any means whatsoever; the air analogy, like all others that try to make the case for God, is a feeble exercise in metaphorical fallacy.