A lot of people I know seem to find comfort and security in their absolute knowledge that God exists. My understanding of this is that it lets one make sense of seemingly senseless events because then you can say that your cousin didn't die in a car accident because of a meaningless set of coincidences, but that God works in mysterious ways and his death somehow serves a higher purpose, even if as humans we can't understand what that purpose is.
As for me, I find the opposite to be true. If I try to imagine that everything in life happens because some omnipotent being out there made it like this I feel trapped and rageful at said being for dumping us into such a crappy world. I find it liberating to believe that life is complete and utter randomness. On the one hand it means that yes, horrible stuff happens to good people for no reason at all. But on the other it means that you really are free to do whatever you want. If you want to be a complete asshole, that's ok, but there's plenty of consequences in this world for that kind of behaviour such as lack of friends and stuff. And if you want to be good then that's fine too, and better yet, you don't need to listen to anything but your own conscience to decide what constitutes good. Hmm, that came out implying that you can be lazy by setting the bar as low as you want, which isn't what I meant. What I meant was that most people have certain moral ideas about what is right and wrong, and not believing in a higher power leaves you free to follow that inner compass rather than trying to reconcile your views with that of your religious institution.
I think I believe in an ideal world that doesn't really exist. I assume that everyone has a strong moral voice that, in the absence of an authority figure (eg god) would still lead people to act in a good/responsible way. I know from experience that there are a lot of people out there who are like that, but that there's also a lot of people out there who either don't possess or don't listen to that voice, who take the easy way out, who act in petty and malicious ways because they're bored or having a bad day or whatever. But then, the majority of those people wouldn't change their ways for religious purposes anyway..
As usual, I have no idea where I'm going with this. But I know that I find the idea of God as a kind of Big Brother to be oppressive, even if he had my best interests at heart. I want to be free, whether that means screwing up big time or becoming something amazing I never knew I could be. And without the capacity for the first the second loses a lot of its savour.
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