Our God — Page 106
106 claim to have seen or recognised God and perceived His attributes as eyewitnesses. All I say is that all nations of the world, despite innumerable religious differences, have proclaimed belief in God, in one form or another, throughout the ages, and this claim alone, because of its universal acceptance, constitutes an argument sup- porting the existence of God. Consider carefully that such universal acceptance of a belief— that all nations proclaim it as a focal point of their faiths, and the failure to find a single instance in recorded history of a nation as a whole rejecting this belief—indeed constitutes an undeniable argument for the truth of said belief. Wrong beliefs do take root in the world; sometimes they disseminate widely over a certain period but never has it been observed that such a wrong belief has spread all over the world so as to engulf all nations without exception, and never beyond a limited period in such a way as to have acquired universal acceptance since the beginning of days. If that happened, peace would vanish from this world and it would become difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood. Hence, the widespread and overwhelming acceptance of this belief—i. e. that there is a Higher Being ruling over this universe who is beyond the limitations of time and space—and the wonderful longevity of this belief, unparalleled in the history of the world, attests that the belief in a Higher Being cannot be false. Indeed, during all of the ages there have been, there are peo- ple who did not believe in any God at all. However, they never attained the status of a nation for any length of time and atheism has never been proclaimed as state religion anywhere; neither has an atheistic movement ever been launched as an independent and well-grounded movement. It has never attained any significance