Does religion rely on guesswork to survive?

IN his Faith Files column (June 27) it’s fascinating how Tim Gossling puts whatever spin is required to make God compatible with dire circumstances rather than let the circumstances speak for themselves.

Commenting on the pandemic and suffering in general, Tim tries to explain God’s involvement (or lack of it) with the all-embracing non-answer “There are no easy answers”.

The elephant in the room haunting

Tim is that the recurrence of cruel, indiscriminate disasters throughout human history does not support the idea of an all-powerful, kindly God with whom we have a personal relationship.

Tim doesn’t believe that God caused coronavirus (is it the spawn of a more malevolent deity?) He concedes God could have prevented it but deliberately chose not to in order to gain our attention.

If that’s the case then why doesn’t God simply reveal himself to us, taking the guesswork out of his existence once and for all? Or does religion need guesswork to survive?

Tim’s Faith Files explains only a guilt-obsession which teaches “to exist is to sin”, stemming from the old sexist fable in which a woman (not her wiser husband, mind!) was corrupted by a talking snake to go scrumping, with dire consequences.

It’s a toned-down variant of the old belief that natural disasters were a punishment from God - a theory that had to be revised in medieval times after it was observed that “holy men” succumbed to the plague as easily as the rest of society.

There are easy answers – for those not afraid to ask uncomfortable questions.

Lee Knowles, Chaddesden