Is it irrational to believe in God?

No, absolutely not. What is irrational is to not believe in God. Because for millennia, humans have believed in god and we all have the need to believe in something.

Religion (and I can only speak for Christianity) provides a teleological end for our lives, that is to say, a meaning.

Teleological comes from the Greek word telos, which means end, purpose, or goal. Religion gives us a telos for our lives, a meaning. And it’s worked for thousands of years.

What is irrational is to make up our own random meaning for our lives and discount completely what has worked for millennia. When we get rid of tradition, we get rid of wisdom. 

If we discount religion, we discount wisdom, and to get rid of what works is completely irrational, and it causes a vacuum in our souls that our mind and spirit abhor.

To quote St Augustine of Hippo, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Without God, we are restless and sometimes irrational. 

The modern-day definition of irrational is all wrong

Many new atheists say that to believe in the supernatural is wrong, yet they forget to realise that what came first, at least in Christianity, was the rituals, and the belief system evolved into the doctrine it is today over many years (when Jesus was around, the New Testament wasn’t written). Religion began with doing.

The rational thing to do is not to listen to the new atheists and instead look at what works, and if believing in God helps us live better in every way, then believing in God cannot be irrational.

My own experience

I’m 27 years old, and I was pretty much an atheist my whole life. Since I started practising Catholicism a year ago, my life has changed for the better in every single way. Believing in the supernatural has made me more rational because it works.

Not everything has to make perfect sense to be rational; it just has to work. Many things, like certain scientific theories, can make sense but don’t work in practice. What is rational is what works.

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