Sometime ago, I created a post on the existence of God: Does God Exist ?
In Ireland, I don’t often come across pure atheists. Over the years, most people I have spoken to have been nominal Catholics who don’t take religion all that seriously. They “sort of” believe in God. However, all of us can function like practical atheists in that we can live our lives with God out of the picture. We can counteract that by reading his word, praying, and fellowshipping with those who can encourage us in our faith. But many people don’t bother doing that, though they won’t classify themselves as atheists.
But in the noughties, with the publication of “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, God’s existence became a talking point or even a hobby, where people debated the issue on various web forums. I used to listen to the Unbelievable podcast, which covered many of these debates.
On a personal level, I’m much more interested in the God of the Bible than the god of philosophy. Whatever doubts I had about various Christian denominations, God himself has always felt very real to me. But it’s nice to know that its reasonable to believe in his existence, and that it’s not just wishful thinking.
I added my own “tuppence ha’penny” on the issue as part of a website that I created for a Christian fellowship. In recent years, I’ve handed the site off to someone else, so it no longer has my content. But when I created my Hibernia Gospel blog last year, I initially decided to migrate some of the evangelistic content, including the Does God Exist? post. It’s nice to have your thoughts out on the web. I often think of this New Testament verse:
1 Peter 3:15
But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,
Anyway, I discovered Google’s NotebookLM a couple of days ago and fed it my Does God Exist? article to see what it would do with it. With NotebookLM, you can feed it an article and it’ll create various resources such as video summaries, podcasts where two AI characters discuss the article, quizzes, flashcards etc. It’s mainly a learning tool to help you to familiarize yourself with the material.
I’m quite pleased with the result. It’s a lot less tedious to listen to than my article 😂.
I thought that it might be nice to share it. I might also see if I can include some of the other resources it generates. I realize that many people hate AI, but I’m just trying to experiment with it and see what could be of use. So here, I’ve added a video, podcast, and PDF slideshow, which it created based on my post. I only have the free tier version, so anyone can play around with NotebookLM. It’s great. Thank you Google! 😂
And here’s two AI characters that NotebookLM generated, who discuss my post on a podcast. Makes me feel important to hear them discussing my post – even if they don’t exist in real life 😀
And here’s the PDF “Slideshow” file that it generated from the article:
Hibernia Gospel 