Questions, questions and answers :)

Few days ago, we had a discussion about religions and god etc. and as usual there were questions. This discussion resulted in following queries (from a friend) and aswers (i tried to explain things according to my capacity and knowledge :) ). Have a look into it, there are some very interesting points in it.

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Q: This is not to offend you, this is your chance! Give us a peace of your mind and get back many more. Share with us your thoughts about the one thing which drives the world, millions and billions of people. Is there a god??

Ans: Well the answer is not easy and it is the most important and the most difficult question to answer, i feel. I think everyone ponders over it; be it a person in East or West or in a far distant forest of Africa or in a village in most poor country. This is important for everyone: a President, a judge, an economist, a philosopher, whatever the status of person is :).
I personally feel that there is an answer and there must be one :).
I think that there is not a specific shape or way to find the answer. Everyone is different from other in one or other way e.g. in regard of face, thinking, history, intelligence, confidence, exposure, family, etc. We make our decisions based upon our previous knowledge, our exposures, our capabilities etc. so to expect that everyone is going to agree to one decision is almost impossible.
At the end this is a belief; a tricky one :). Neither one can 100 % prove God nor can anyone disprove Him totally. This is an interesting but challenging task and the one which i take as the most important one in life. I think we simply can't afford to lose in this challenge but how to solve this puzzle is both very easy and also very difficult :), it depends and is left open to everyone. Do you not enjoy it? :). Life could have been dull without a fight, without a task to find and to reach a goal!

Q: This was not the topic we thought of when we started the discussion regulars table yesterday. But if you start thinking you never know where you gonna end. I promise you will be surprised by the life changing effect a simple discussion can have.

Ans: we always learn and we learn from everything:) be it good or bad, be it pleasant or bitter, be it logical or illogical! We start with almost untrained and empty brain in our childhood and then we increase our learning from our experiences. Fear of failure and deception must not hinder in the way of our learning; these things are bound to come along good things.

Q: So here is the project. We wanna collect your thoughts. Tell us all the arguments you've got for and against the existence of a god. Tell us your theories about religion. Challenge yourself and share your spiritual opinion with us! We will collect them and put them all together to a final paper. Arguments of 10 people? Arguments of 30 people? Arguments of 100 people? It's up to you!

Ans: I will share my thoughts with openness. Although there already have been given hundreds/thousands of arguments and have been millions of discussions on this topic and this will continue but we are we :), this is our time, our life. We are also as important as any other generation before us and those which will follow us. I am not a scholar but i think only scholars are not bound to find the true answers, all do have this power/capabilities to find the answer(s).
As i wrote earlier, no one can fully prove or deny God but we should go for the search. I will not write arguments separately rather generally I will try to answer queries of others but surely I will also try to write extra things according to my capacity and knowledge.

Q: To avoid spamming the list please send your ideas directly to me and not over the list, we'll give you an update about the arguments from time to time.

Ans: I think no one should feel stress, shyness or fear. I can assure one thing: NO ONE CAN FORCE ANYONE FOR A BELIEF, IT COMES PURELY FROM ONE'S OWN CONVICTION. EVEN IF ALL THE PEOPLE EXCEPT ONE PERSON DECIDE ON ONE SIDE, THEY CAN'T PULL THAT SINGLE PERSON ON THEIR SIDE FOR A BELEIF:). So please be open but surely in a way where you feel comfortable. We must not be answerable for what would be out of our comprehension/capacity but we must be answerable for the efforts which we did not put although we were able to put them.

Q: Afterwards we can have a discussion regulars table about it, maybe a panel discussion, maybe we can write a book, maybe change the world?? It's up to us!!

Ans: Since this matter is quite sensitive one so i think not all people would like to take single way of exploring it. This topic is much broader and the learning is not bound to one meeting, country, society, discussion, experience or few days, it is open and gradual process. But we should not stop, should not be disappointed after bad experience or even after good one :).

Q: I wanna share a few of my personal thoughts with you to make a start and to give you an idea how it could look like:
If there is an allmighty god, then he could create a stone which he cannot carry himself??

Ans: :) An interesting question. No one of us knows exactly God's powers, attributes and way of working. There could be many similar questions. May be there would be a solution to this problem but we can only guess and guess and would be nowhere at the end. I don't mean that God's powers should not be analysed but what we want to achieve by putting such questions: to put us in a helpless state? :). Such question would simply stop us from learning further so before we could think about such questions, we need to learn about the characteristics of God and the religious philosophies in a bit more depth.

Q: If there is a god, why is there so much evil in the world? Some people say, for good things to exist bad things also need to exist. If we all were exactly half a meter thick there would be no corpulent or thin people. It is the availability of both opposites which allows each other to exist. So maybe for moral good to exist also moral evil needs to exist. And if moral good is such a great thing, maybe it is worth allowing also the existence of moral evil. Or maybe our brain is just to small to understand god's ways??

Ans: Well, it is also an interesting and very often asked question. It is a source of discomfort for many believers and non-believers too :). Being realistic i think it is beyond our strength to judge the true purpose of everything which is created! Anyway, i try to explain within my capacities.
There could have been many many different ways to design the system of life by God; we could have been tested for our intentions and deeds in some other ways than this specific system! But i think that this particular system must be the most appropriate one for us, according to our nature, according to our needs and to the best of our benefit since God is the Most Wise and the most Caring towards us . There is no doubt that God allowed evil to exist, just to test us. Evil can't be out of His control otherwise He is not a true God :).
People might say that why did He not made the test easier :), well, i think this system might be the easiest one for us. God gave us both options for selection, Good and Bad, and left the system work in some natural way for a specified time, with firm and sure promise of ultimate justice and compensation at the end. It also does not mean that He left us totally at the mercy of Evil - not at all. He provided us with the appropriate protection against attacks of Evil. He is always there to help His Creation: Man, beside that there have been thousands of Messengers and Prophets from Him to guide and help mankind. Holy scriptures have been there to clear the things (although one may debate problems attached to them). These are not the only things; we are also blessed with instinctive power to recognize good and bad!!! So if there is a test, there are also very strong means to clear it.

Q: Is god just a god of the "week and sick" (Nietzsche)? Have you ever wondered why people start praying to god when they have problems or are sick and ill? Is god just something which is needed for people who are not strong enough to live on their own? Isn't consume a much better god? Isn't enjoying the moment an adequate equivalent?

Ans: God is the Creator and Sustainer of everything. I don’t think that healthy or rich people are able to deny Him or they can avoid the calamities and problems using their wealth or power. Even president of richest country can’t stop his age and can stay healthy and happy all the time. He/she can’t claim for the creation, sustenance of the Universe or even of World. Can that president make the Sun to rise from the opposite direction? Can he/she control the weather of the world totally?...
Yes, it is true that man’s nature is such that he forgets many important things for some time when he is happy and contended :). Man can’t feel and think about many aspects of life at one time but when he is in pain and can’t find solution then he turns to the reality which is always there no matter we gave attention to it or not. There are many very rich and healthy people who are firm believer of God!

Q: If you look at the history of the catholic church, do you really think that these people could have been chosen by god? Popes having sex with multiple women, killings of witches in the name of god, crusades, getting your sins forgiven for money?

Ans: It is a bit complex issue. I would like to say that no one else is given the authority from God of being the role model except the Prophets and those who fulfil the certain strict criteria. First of all not all the people of Church have been bad; it is against natural law. If some religious authorities have been misusing their authorities it does not put all on the negative side. It also has been partially mistake of the followers who blindly take all the words of religious authorities as sacred one and supposing it to be from God. We are ourselves lazy to know about religion(s) and when we are cheated in the name of God or religion then we cry foul :)!! There is no room for unfairness, no matter what religious authority of a person could be: even Prophets were not allowed to be unfair.
We just need to understand and compare core of religions by minimising effect of personalities or followers since one can always find right and wrong people in every group.

Q: If there is a god and you don't believe in him you will go to hell, if there is no god and you do believe in him doesn't matter. So why not just believe in god, then you cannot go wrong!??

Ans: Sounds very interesting! Is it not? :). If someone will believe in this way, his/her approach would be very limited, insufficient and unrealistic. I think believe can’t come with such thinking, it requires much more efforts, knowledge, sincerity and reflection.

Q: The world is so beautiful, things are fitting together perfectly, could that be done without a god? Evolution theory sais yes. There are evolutionary algorithms in computer science taking some thousands of random pieces of programming code and mixing them, then selecting some which are the best according to a quality factor and then mixing these again. After doing this several times you get a program which is doing something meaningful. So is that a prove of evolution theory?

Ans: hoooo. Ok, let us suppose that Evolution theory is true but what does it say about the starting point? Who has given a system where evolution could take place or in other words who defined the rules for the evolution? What does Evolution theory says about purpose of life? Who will give justice to those who have been killed unfairly, for example? I feel this theory just gives some hints about how a mechanism could work but it falls far short for giving answers to major questions of life and also it is nothing which could claim to be an Intelligent Creator or Initiator in any sense.

Q: What about science and church. If church is positioning itself against science, every step science makes forward, church makes backward. Church was claiming that the earth is flat, science proved it to be wrong. If religious people say humans are made by god in opposition to evolution theory, more proves of evolution will prove the church wrong. But what about if church goes along with science, f.e. claiming that the human ancestors were indeed apes, but that this was part of the process of making them. Who says that the creation of mankind couldn't have lasted longer than 7 of our todays days? In the bible god says: "One day for me is like a thousand days for you" (roughly summarized). So, who knows how long creation of mankind really took?

Ans: Before we really could try to find an answer, we should know that man is limited in its abilities. We don't know exactly why we were born at a particular place, to a particular family, at a particular time? Why we have this specific shape? Why we have only one Sun near the Earth? What will exactly happen to us next day? Whom exactly we will meet on the street, what is happening on the other side of the wall which we can't see? Why we have oxygen as breathing source why not any other gas? Why we have two eyes why not one or three etc?
May be we can find answers to some of these mysterious questions but to know and control everything is just our dream. We even can't totally control our thoughts, our dreams, circulation of blood, and our mood so far, for example. Well someone can say that may be one day we can find and control everything with the help of science but this is just a theory/dream. It is quite possible that at the end we might find out that everything is being controlled by God; and that science is as weak as a creation could be! So should we just go behind one source of information e.g. science and close our brain towards all other sources of information? What is the guarantee that science will win at the end? What if we miss some other important sources of information due to undue reliance upon Ms. science? :)
I don't mean by all this that we must deny science and logic etc but i want to stress that we should not rely only upon one source for discovery rather search should be broader but controlled one!! By the way, God should not be afraid of science and technology and He is not as far as i have read the Qur’an; it rather encourages the discoveries and pondering upon things around us. There are many scientific facts described in Qur’an and most of them (according to some people all of them) are not in conflict to well proven concepts of science. But this matter should be left to individuals to decide themselves.
I think science is going to be a very important factor in distinguishing the reality from ambiguities so stay tuned :) !!!

Q: What about if God and Allah are actually the same god, and Jesus as well as Mohammad were both his prophets (together with all the other ones)?

Ans: It is in fact true from Islamic point of view. As I wrote earlier Prophets have been main source for the guidance of people on the earth. All of them came to build the connection between God and Man. All of them are important and very respected. They did not had dispute with each other.

Q: Why are there so many different religions? Doesn't that look like everybody makes his own god? Or does that express the natural need for humans to believe in a god? Or is it depended on your developing stage?

Ans: I think this difference of thinking and perception is part of the system. If one has to make some perception of something which he/she has not seen, then different people will have different one, based upon their own thinking, experience and knowledge. One will find variety of different perceptions of God among the Believers of even one group. It gets better with knowledge and practice. If one has to try to imagine someone who is unlimited by the help of a limited brain, how it will be?. But one should not forget to seek help from the heart in this context. This uncertain perception does not apply only to God; there are many things which we may not know fully e.g. Human character and nature, universe, how exactly a person will behave etc. There is always our natural interest in finding the hidden things :)…
Just enjoy the variety of religions; it makes things interesting and challenging :).
One thing I would like to share also; there are very strong and almost undeniable facts proving God. Only thing where we have to stop is that we can’t see him at the end but provided facts (everything we observe around us) are more than enough to prove Him.

-->happy thinking!!

What I wrote is my personal thinking and analysis and it in no way means that others are obliged to take it as ultimate truth. It is open to objections, disagreements and questions.

Best wishes,
zaheer