I was Catholic. I've had my own long journey with God. At first when I was a child I was a believer and actually felt like he was good and felt warmth thinking he was good, that despite all he would be there to receive me. Then I started to get into my youth and started to learn about science and other religions, asked the same question of why would god allow so much bad, and became an atheist. For a long time after that I searched for a substitute philosophy, even substitute religion, but to be fair I just started to forget and everyday life took over my mind.
I was still bitter over everything. Until my mother became much more religious than usual. She was getting old and I figured she was starting to get scared for the very close possibly of dying sooner than later just by numbers and probability. Seeing her talking about God and surround herself with so many trinkets and candles and prayers, taking care of dolls with their image and making food offerings to them, etc. At first it angered me very much because of course it was all fake as I thought at the time. She was wasting so much good food daily in offerings to inanimate objects and then throwing the food to the trash. Praying instead of talking about her fears with us. Doing all sorts of things like rituals recommend by all sorts of dubious people that actually affected the rest of the family.
Eventually she calmed down a bit because of our rejection to certain things. I just had to accept that this would be my life now and there was nothing good to come out of rejecting her more, so we just accepted that she is just a hardcore believer because of fear of death and that we simply had to tolerate it and let her be as long as she doesn't harm us or herself...
Then outside of her, I started to ask myself again what God is then. I started to miss that kind of "delusion", thinking that some people can get so much relief in this things while I just can't anymore.
In the end I think God is not a person of course. Is not someone that can alter anything for the better or to his will. Is not even good if we think about it. God is just the idea of the maximum good, and power, and recompense, of justice, and it's the idea of a light that people can follow to become better themselves (at least for some).
My boss for example, is also catholic believer, but he's much less crazy than my mother. He thinks the same. God is not a person on the sky of anything, is just a concept. The maximum expression of good that can only exist in our own imagination, but as a concept it could be said that it exists, even as just a thought that somewhere in some way by some cosmic probability bs there could be someone or something like that. That if someone so terrible can exist, then by shear logic of the rules of the universe then there can be someone that is just good. And that is good to think from time to time in something that represents the absolute good, just like one would do thinking about platonic forms in the cave allegory from Plato.
I actually am currently satisfied with this thought. God doesn't "exist". But it still exists as a concept. I don't believe in the person described in the bible going around doing miracles and sitting on a throne in the sky. But I do believe that there has to be something that represents the ultimate good, the ultimate power, the ultimate justice, even if it's just a thought that might not be part of our universe, it might exist in another reality even outside of ours, or just in our own imagination. But just by thinking about it you bring it into existence of sorts. Another different thing would be actually believing in it more than just thinking about it. But it's a possibility. Just as there being the possibility of the ultimate evil, at least in concept. I don't know where on the spectrum our reality falls in out of all possibilities though. But its just interesting to think about at least without much seriousness.
www.reasonablefaith.org
I'd be long gone without having discovered God in 2021. For me it was life changing. I still struggle a lot in life but that connection has helped. I'm much less afraid in life but it's not totally gone but not as extreme as I was.
