Dear Big Question,
Where do babies come from?
It’s one of the first questions we ever ask. Not because we’re ready for biology, but because we’ve noticed something strange: new things keep showing up. People appear. Ideas appear. Feelings appear. The world keeps unfolding, and at some point we realize we don’t actually know where any of it comes from.
So we ask.
And when we’re little, we accept the first answer that works. The stork. The cabbage patch. A story just complicated enough to quiet the curiosity without overwhelming us. Not because it’s true, but because it’s good enough for now.
Religion often works the same way.
Before theology, before doctrine, before rules and institutions, there was the same childlike wonder:
Why is there something instead of nothing?
Why does the universe exist at all?
Why do I exist?
Why does anything matter?
The word “God” didn’t arrive with a definition. It arrived as a placeholder. A linguistic life raft tossed into an ocean of mystery. A way of pointing toward something too big, too abstract, too overwhelming to explain directly.
Here’s the tricky part: once a placeholder sticks, we start treating it like a finished explanation.
We forget that “God” wasn’t originally an answer. It was a gesture. A finger pointing. A story meant to carry awe, not certainty. And over time, we built entire systems on top of that early attempt to say something when we didn’t yet have the language for what we were experiencing.
Philosophy of religion asks us to slow that moment back down.
Before belief.
Before disbelief.
Before arguments for or against.
Before atheism, theism, agnosticism, or anything else with a label.
It asks us to return to the question before the vocabulary solidified.
What were we trying to say when we first said “God”?
Were we naming a being?
A force?
A cause?
A consciousness?
A metaphor?
A mystery?
Or were we simply admitting that we had reached the edge of what we could explain?
This week, we’re not here to tell you what to believe. We’re here to examine how humans have tried to explain the unexplainable, and what happens when stories meant to soothe curiosity turn into claims meant to end it.
So we start here, not with answers, but with the most honest posture philosophy knows:
Admitting we don’t yet have the words.
And asking anyway.
So we turn to you, dear reader, and ask:
When you hear the word “God,” what do you think you’re being asked to imagine?
A being?
An explanation?
A feeling?
A question?
Or a story that once helped someone make sense of the world?
Let’s begin there.
Not with certainty.
But with curiosity.
Still asking,
~ The Radical Left