Leaving some scientists and all atheists aside, the bulk of humanity believes in the existence of a being that brought about creation, and thus us, into existence. In fact less than 15 per cent of the world population state that they do not believe in God, or gods (Year 2000 figure).
Yet for all it is worth, none of our mainstream religions have come up with a god that is for all people at all places for all times. Why is this so, considering that 85 per cent of humanity believes in the existence of God?
The main reason for this division of adherents for a particular god is the “protection of the faith” dilemma faced by those who believe in the validity of the beliefs they hold dear. It is a veritable survival of the fittest contest when it comes to keeping the flame burning.
Where any religion plans to extend its influence, it has to resort to vilification of others and exaggeration of its own excellences. Pomp and publicity become more important than practice and faith.
Each religion promotes its god as the only one, and the rest are deemed fake, phoneys or figments of imagination. It is either my god; or their god, or a demon/devil posing as god, or anything except the possibility that it could be god.
The egoistic craving for power and competitive success has, in some cases, persuaded us to use religion as an instrument of torture and persecution. Instead of uniting mankind in a common endeavour, it has become a system of walled enclosures, guarded by hate and fanaticism.
The belief system surrounding any god has been built up over generations, and is based on “tried and true” ways of interpreting events that brought about a collective belief. For example, what would Judaism be without the laws of Moses, or Islam without Prophet Mohammed’s (Praise Be To His Name) call to his people, or Christianity without Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, or Hinduism without its concept of an avatar, or Buddhism without Buddha?
I believe each religion attempts to impart holy ideals in the heart of man. But, man does not allow them to sprout and grow. Each religion has become an armed camp. Set in the path to self aggrandizement, trying to wean others into itself and preventing defections from it, religion, in many cases, is the root of chaos and conflict.
The teacher may have been inclusive, compassionate, a propagator of news ideas (so well demonstrated by Jesus and Prophet Mohammed) but not so the followers. Rigid rules and thought patterns were the outcomes of a system that wanted to retain its beliefs at all costs. At the cost of thought. At the cost of humanity.
It is these feelings of elitism, of exclusivity, of being the chosen lot that makes religions the laughing stock of any rational person. And the fanatics who maintain that their god is the only right one puts paid to the idea that religion has any saving grace.
Yet, and I mean this emphatically, God remains a most vital aspect of humanity. Take away the dross of any system of beliefs and God becomes apparent. But first you have to take away the dross.
This means making an effort to wean yourself away from the conditioning and habits of what you have learnt as part of your culture’s interpretation of God.
One of the best ways of doing this is to answer the following questions honestly:
Do you believe God is omniscient, that He knows every thought of yours, even the ones you don’t want Him to know?
If yes, do you firmly believe that anything you do, think, or say, from the smallest act/thought/word to the grossest, is known to Him?
Do you act as if every act and thought of yours is known to Him?
Do you believe God is omnipresent? If yes, does this mean that God is in everything around and beyond you? Is this an intellectual belief or a belief that you live by? Do you treat anyone you meet as an embodiment of God, no matter how evil he is or what wrong he has done to you? Do you believe every living thing is an embodiment of God?
If you don’t, then God can’t be omnipresent and it puts paid to the idea that god is all-knowing and present everywhere. Then he can’t be god. No amount of qualifying can get past this idea – if God is to be omniscient and omnipresent, He must know what you think, say or do and if He is omnipresent, He is everywhere, in you, outside of you and in everything else you see.
Only after we have accepted these two ideas can we even begin to look at the omnipotence of God.
The practice of believing that God is omniscient and omnipresent is the royal road to godhead, not any other thing. All rites and rituals in any religion does but one thing, purify our thoughts enough for this one belief to take root in our minds; that God is Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent.
God by any name should still be omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. This is the test of faith, of belief in your system and it should be what decides who believes in God and who doesn’t.
Notes to ponder
1. As of 2000, approximately 53 per cent of the world's population identifies with one of the three Abrahamic religions (33 per cent Christian, 20 per cent Islam, <1 per cent Judaism), 6 per cent with Buddhism, 13 per cent with Hinduism, 6 per cent with traditional Chinese religion, 7 per cent with various other religions, and less than 15 per cent as non-religious. Most of these religious beliefs involve a god or gods
2. The word "deity" derives from the Latin "dea", ("goddess"), and '"deus", ("god"), and other Indo-European roots such as from the Sanskrit "deva", ("god"), "devi", ("goddess"), "divya", ("transcendental", "spiritual"). Related are words for "sky": the Latin "dies" ("day") and "divum" ("open sky"), and the Sanskrit "div," "diu" ("sky," "day," "shine"). Also related are "divine" and "divinity," from the Latin "divinus," from "divus." Khoda (Persian: ??? ) translates to God from Persian.
The English word "God" comes from Anglo-Saxon, and similar words are found in many Germanic languages (e.g. the German "Gott" — "God").
3. God is usually held to have the following properties: holiness, justice, sovereignty, omnipotence, omniscience, benevolence, omnipresence, and immortality. It is also believed to be transcendent, meaning that God is outside space and time. Therefore, God is eternal and unable to be changed by earthly forces or anything else within its creation.
4. Some Jewish, Christian and Muslim Medieval philosophers, including Moses Maimonides and Pseudo-Dionysius, as well as many sages of other religions, developed what is termed as Apophatic Theology or the Via Negativa, the idea that one cannot posit attributes to God and can only be discussed by what God is not. For example, we cannot say that God "exists" in the usual sense of the term, because that term is human defined and God's qualities such as existence may not be accurately characterized by it. What we can safely say is that it cannot be proven empirically or otherwise that God is existent, therefore God is not non-existent. Likewise God's "wisdom" is of a fundamentally different kind from limited human perception. So we cannot use the word "wise" to describe God, because this implies he is wise in the way we usually describe humans being wise. However we can safely say that God is not ignorant. We should not say that God is One, because we may not truly understand his nature, but we can state that there is no multiplicity in God's being.
The above concept is also prevalent in Hinduism as seen by the phrase “neti, neti Brahman”, (this in not Brahman) in pursuing the ideal of what is Brahman and what is the jagat (world).
5. 'Process theology' is a school of thought influenced by the metaphysical process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), and 'Open theism' is a theological movement that began in the 1990s, is similar, but not identical, to Process theology.
In both views, God is not omnipotent in the classical sense of a coercive being. Reality is not made up of material substances that endure through time, but serially-ordered events, which are experiential in nature. The universe is characterized by process and change carried out by the agents of free will. Self-determination characterizes everything in the universe, not just human beings. God and creatures co-create. God cannot force anything to happen, but rather only influence the exercise of this universal free will by offering possibilities. Process theology is compatible with panentheism, the concept that God contains the universe (pantheism) but also transcends it. God as the ultimate logician - God may be defined as the only entity, by definition, possessing the ability to reduce an infinite number of logical equations having an infinite number of variables and an infinite number of states to minimum form instantaneously.
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