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Dear Spin,

First of all, I am not, I'll repeat that, NOT denying the existence of a god-like entity.

I am just saying:
1) To this day, most (I refrain from using all, because I am not sure in this case) items that were directly linked with metaphysical entities have been proven false by science.
Cfr.: Shroud of Turin.
2) The story, as posed by the poster, is not conclusive evidence that God/Allah exists, seeing that I can tell you the exact same story, but change 'Allah' with 'The Easter Bunny'/'Chuck Norris'/'my a**' to prove that our suffering happens because we do not turn to them.

The fault in your reasoning, as I see it, is that you take my short rant as a direct attack on religious believes. It is not an attack what so ever. This, if one fails to spot the introduction on a first reading ( I am merely pointing out where your parable is lacking ), can be learned from what is said in the rant. Failing to understand what I have written there, one can still just read my conclusion (which I will now repeat to make it extra clear):

In the end, I fear, the story, as given here, is too ambigious.

As you see, this rant is against these types of stories. I dislike stories that go nowhere, even more so when I can in a short paragraph of logic destroy their rationale.

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Ok, the lack of faith...
Once upon a time, there was a man who lived in a cave. He believed angry Gods outside, who smote things with lightning, who caused floods and who chased away the herds.
He also believed that there were 'good' Gods out there; the ones that brought back the herds, those that made spring come to pass, the ones that took care of the sun.
Now, this man started telling the other cavemen his ideas and those cavemen believed him, for what he told them made sense. After all, lightning could not appear out of thin air, could it? Thus the cavemen believed in the angry and the good Gods. Eventually, they even got round to making rituals for them, as they found the god of lightning was pleased when they left three sticks of iron standing in a nearby field. They went out every April into the fields and put up their three iron sticks so summer would come soon.

Then, one day, long after the first caveman died, during the traditional lightning-festival, a new man came along. He did not live in caves or trees, but he rode around on a horse. And he brought other men with sharp and shiny sticks. Then he told the cavemen that their 'so-called' angry and good gods did not exist. That there was only one 'God', who took care of everything in his infinite wisdom. The man then showed the cavemen a strange square object, with all kinds of strange colours, which could split in half to reveal small black lines and drawings. The cavemen then were told they could either worship a man who was said to be the son of this 'God' or they could die an agonizing and painful death.
The cavemen did not think for long.

This is how modern faith came into existence. My example is the conversion of a backward European tribe by a roman preacher (after the Christian belief had become the official religion in the roman empire).

Would those cavemen have been better off not knowing what 'God' was? Would they have been happier if they had been left to their iron rod festival? Who knows?
Maybe our faith in the entity we believe in is misplaced? Maybe we should all be putting up iron rods in nearby fields? Is worshipping the wrong god worse than not worshipping at all? Should we even worship?

In the end, the 'God' worshipped by Christians, the 'Allah' by Muslims, the enlightenment sought by Buddhists is not something that sprang from our own brain, it's something that has over the years been moulded by other human beings into something that they could use to get a message across.

The base of monotheistic religions in the west was a demented pharaoh in Egypt who declared the official polytheistic tradition stupid and unified everything under Anon (if I remember correctly) a God-being resembling the sun. Jewish slaves working in Egypt at the time picked this up and brought it back home to their tribes once they escaped. That's the illustrious beginning of the religions of the book.

Now, I know it is impossible to convince someone who deeply believes in something of the contrary. I honestly know I cannot do that. I can live with that. In the end, nobody knows for sure what happens when we die. Just like back when you were young, you didn't know for sure that there wasn't a monster under your bed. Then you grew up, looked and found there was nothing there.
Did that sadden you? No, because you were happy you could sleep without having to be scared.
To me, if you believe in anything, I applaud you. If you believe in the holistic world-view (everything is connected) or you are more into a predetermined pattern (fatalism) or a clockmaker-theory (Metaphysical entities may have created us, but they cannot stop us from doing what we do without destroying their entire creation); I cannot say that your believes are wrong without any concrete proof.
I can accept that.
BUT
If you make up a story that has several huge holes in it; I will point them out.
I will tell you that if you believe that, there are several things you are lacking. Things like intelligence, for example.
Is this me lacking in faith? Or is this me being critical?

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Comfort in Faith

Well Spin, I honestly think you have a point there, up to a certain moment in time.
You see, it is easy to draw comfort from something you believe in, but it is not comforting to find out that you will die, in spite of all you do to stay around. At that point in time, you suddenly come to face one of two facts; either
'God' doesn't care about you
Or
'God' cannot help you.
I highly doubt that is any comfort at all.
(I am now going to go in dept on something aunty Taty told me, which is why the dying person in the story is female)
If you happen to find out you have a fatal illness, suddenly, you are all alone. No matter how many people are around you, because they do not understand what it is to die. To be sure you will die soon. To lose your health, to lose your children, to lose your husband. There is nobody that I know who can carry such a load with you. Who can bear such a pain? After all, the children lose a mother, the father loses a wife, but they do so knowing that they will live on. They will mourn, they will grieve and in time (a long time) they will be able to pick up where they left off and they will try to make the best of their lives without the dead mother.
She got the best comfort of other people, those who were also diagnosed with fatal diseases. True.
"Heaven and hell, both are in others. You just have to hope there's more of the first."

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One cannot prove the existence of God.

There is no reason why.
There is no reason why not.
Or maybe, it would be better to state that there are too many reasons why.
Or maybe, it would be better to state that there are too many reasons why not.
In the end, this is an argument held within philosophical circles for ages.
One side says that the lack of proof is a proof 'gods' exist (search within yourself),
One side says proof is in abundance (the miracles of life which we witness every day),
One side says the lack of proof is a proof 'gods' do not exist (how to prove something without evidence?).
One side says that the proof given by the supporters can be disempowered through science to show that what the believers say is faulty,
Etc etc.

At the end of the day, to me, I cannot raise beyond doubt the statement that there is a 'God' or multiple 'Gods' who watch over us, who made us, who do things or who do not do things.
On the other hand, I cannot do the opposite either. Where does that leave me?

That leaves me to believe what I believe is the truth.
What would that be?

I believe that

One cannot prove the existence of God, nor waylay this existence, at this moment.


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Thanks for reading through this, I was planning on making this a short reply, but I got caught up in my own pen (keyboard?) while flexing my literary muscles. If any of this seems wrong to anyone, do point it out to me, I wrote this entire thing in one go, so there's bound to be some missers in it sweatdrop
I would like to excuse myself if I insulted anyone or directly offended someone's believes. I tried not to.

And most of all, I hope it made sense and that my reader(/s?) enjoyed it.