OK. Rachel's on to Reason Number 4. She's still feeling pretty good - she's a believer already, remember - she doesn't need these reasons to know she's right. But she is a bit worried that reasons 1-3 just didn't make any sense. Surely there must be some good reason to believe in God, other than "because I do!"
4. To state with certainty that there is no God, a person has to ignore the passion of an enormously vast number of people who are convinced that there is a God.
This is a tough one to swallow.
An enormously vast number of people thought for most of human existence that the sun revolved around the earth and that the stars were fixed in position on a canopy above us. Even though vast numbers of people were utterly, passionately convinced about these things they simply weren't true. The sun does not rotate around the earth. The stars are not on some kind of fixed canopy.
In Norse times (based on what the Norsemen knew) an enormously vast number of people were convinced that there is a Thor. (The number of people who did believe that is documented and the total is referred to as the Thor Thumb.) It didn't make it true.
So just because vast numbers of people believe in a God, no matter how passionately, that is no reason to think that God exists. There is also an enormously vast number of people (many millions) who are passionately convinced there is no God. How do we resolve this? Does the truth about God become something we decide by vote? More people believe in God than don't so God must exist?
Rachel's palms are beginning to sweat. These are not reasons. These reasons are nonsense. Is this the best that God can give her to get out there and fight the good fight with? It doesn't make sense. Surely there must be better reasons than these? We're talking about God here! She hopes 5 & 6 will help her out...let's hope so.
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