God Defines everything, but your definition of God decides what type of God you believe in.
- Humans Can Be Virtuous Without God
A Muslim from when he was a little kid playing games of different kind to when he was a young adult stressed out about the future, he was a hard-core Islamic believer. He still remembers how it was to study in an Islamic school where everything starts from Bismillah and at the end of all the classes students had to recite all supplications. Apparently, praying was a casual habit for him back then.
As an add-on to the regular prayers, there was a special class only to teach religion, Deeniyat. If my recollections are clear and precise, we were told:
- Believe in Allah, you will be saved
- If you disobey the will of God, you will perish in Hell
- All the religions are false except Islam
- Islam is the only path to God
Now let me write in first person!
You Will Never Believe These Bizarre Truth Of God
There were many moral lessons taught in my Deeniyat class. I think that the goal of my religion class was to teach us values and morals and to nurture a good individual. I am in full support to the end, which is to be a good individual. However, I dislike the idea that the motivation used behind it is either the rewards for obeying or punishment for disobeying. For me as an individual, being a good person is a personal choice. Anyone can make that choice, regardless of what beliefs one holds.
Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishments after you are dead. — Kurt Vonnegut
- The Religious Scriptures are Not Enough Evidence
One of the most influential books in history is undoubtedly the Holy Quran. It is the very foundation of Islam and its beliefs. While I agree that it is History, but it can’t be used as a proof of God’s existence. There is no way to prove that the miracles in the Quran are true. Why had all the supernatural things happened only in the past? Why can’t they happen now? All the supernatural things happen only in religions, not in the real world.
The Islamic scholars at the max may interpret what God wants to say but not exactly what He necessarily means. I won’t bet my life on that. And for sure, some words of the Holy Quran may not be relevant to the present world we live in.
Though there are a lot of lessons in the Holy Quran that teaches us how to be a good individual and a caring steward for others, lessons which I agree on, it still doesn’t prove that God Exists.
There are no facts, only interpretations. — Friedrich Nietzsche
- I Have Unanswered Questions
The planet we call home, Earth, is just a speck in the entire Universe. If God exists, why do we think that we are his precious creation? For all we know, our existence might just be a random event in the Universe. Then why do we think we are the only one important to God? The answer is probably because of the things mentioned in the Bible. Since I don’t totally believe in the Bible, I don’t think we are important. We are just an insignificant dot in the vast sea of stars and clouds of dust.
One more question I have is this: Let’s say that yes, there is God, all knowing, omniscient, and superiorly powerful and He was able to bring forth the existence of the Universe, why do we associate human characteristics to such superior being?
What I noticed is that God’s characteristics are mostly derived from human traits. Humans have emotions; God has emotions. Humans have a strong sense of justice; so as God. Humans communicate; God communicates. Humans love; God loves. See, what I’m trying to say here is that if God really exists, I firmly believe that he is someone beyond our comprehension. We can never tell what He wants or doesn’t want. Just like ants can never understand we don’t want them to bite us.
Our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, is challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. — Carl Sagan
The Ugly Truth about God
- I Went Too Far In the Religious Spectrum
Like what I’ve mentioned earlier, I believed in God before. Back then, I prayed most of the time. I confessed my sins, told my wishes and dreams, and gave thanks for the blessings. Then suddenly I started questioning his existence. My line of thinking when I first had doubts was similar to what I explained in the previous section, that God doesn’t care about us and He is beyond our comprehension. As you can see, I didn’t reject the existence of God in that argument, but there’s a question in the definition of God.
Later, I learned that my new belief was called Deism. Unlike Atheists who are non-believers, Deists believe that God exists but denies His interference in the laws of the Universe. To put it simply, Deists believe that there is God but He didn’t save you from that accident; He did not help you pass the exam; He didn’t put food on the table. God is just the Creator.
Think of this, Scientists say the ‘Big Bang’ started it all. In the beginning, there was a tiny but super dense particle that exploded and expanded which lead to what we now call Universe. But where did that particle came from? If it came from ‘X’, where did ‘X’ came from, ‘Y’? And ‘Y’ came from ‘Z’. Well, that’s going to be an endless cycle. That paradox is what convinced me, back then, that there is a creator. But the role of God is simply the solution to the paradox I presented. He doesn’t necessarily have to be a superior being if a being at all. He may be an event, an equation, a law in the Universe, or anything else that will solve the paradox and the mysteries of the Universe. I need not pray to such God.
- it’s Simply a Choice
In the end, it all comes down to making a choice. There is no evidence that proves or disproves the existence of God. Probably it’ll take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to finally figure things out. So until that day of enlightenment, the choice is ours to speculate and choose what we believe in. As for me, I choose to believe in the creator in my own way.
Whatever choice anyone makes, it deserves to be respected. Imposing our beliefs on other people is a disrespectful thing to do. We shouldn’t force anyone to join us in what we believe. We shouldn’t judge and discriminate because of differences in beliefs neither. Let’s embrace our differences and focus on making the world a better place. Because even if you believe in God and I don’t, I think we can live peacefully together, and that’s what truly matters.
*Important Note
I just want to make it clear that I did not write this to convince anyone that God does not exist or anything like that, for it is against my principles to impose my beliefs on other people. Many of the things I’ve mentioned in this article may be debatable and disagreeable, and I acknowledge that. Just to let you know, the main reason why I wrote this is to make sure that I truly understand what I believe in.
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