Not Recognising Belief.

I saw a video on YouTube recently in which an American minister from some Church or other went to Scandinavia and asked a variety of people ‘Do you believe in God?’ When the answer came back ‘No’, as most of them did, he looked oddly elated and exclaimed ‘Wow!’ This suggested to me that the video was carrying a subtext somewhere along the lines of:

‘Hey everybody, I discovered this weird tribe of humanoids up there in the north of Europe who don’t believe in God! Ain’t that fascinating?’

I lay some of the blame for such silliness on the weird Scandinavians who answered ‘No.’ If he’d asked me the question, my first response would have been:

‘I don’t know what “believe” means, exactly. It falls somewhere in an undefined space between “I give credence to” and “I know”, and seems to me, therefore, to be worthless.’

My second response would have been:

‘Before I can even begin to consider such a question, you will have to define “God” for me.’