I have had several questions in my childhood. I found answers to most of them. But not to this question.

Is there God?

My mind always exploded whenever I realized that there is nothing called ‘forever’. One day, I will vanish like a speck of dust leaving behind everything including my memories.

Every night before sleep, I used to ask myself, ‘I know one day I will die. But is it possible for me to stay in an eternal world? Atleast where my consciousness can stay forever. If such a place exists, who would have created that? And who else would live there? Is it what they call God and heaven?’

Life on Earth was created more than 3.5 billion years ago. Yet, to this day, no one has ever given a clear, objective answer to this question. Its funny when people claim that their religion is ‘the oldest’. Unfortunately, the numbers they claim are peanuts. A 2000, a 5000 or even a 10,000 year old religion becomes trivial when we consider how long we are on this planet as a species. I understand that having a way of life through religions is important. But it is even more important to question our existence.

I have come across a plethora of philosophies and religious texts which claim God’s existence and characteristics. Most of them point to the following quotes.

God is Inside You. 
God is in Heaven.
Devotion is God.
Nature is God.
Love is God.
Kindness is God.
Dedication is God.

All these sound nice. But they don’t answer the original question – is there God? The answer to this question is ‘Yes or No’. Not inside, outside or love. If there is no God, then there are no questions. It means that the universe exists by itself and life on Earth was created as a result of probabilties. The result of randomness could have sparked life in the universe. But what if God exists and life was not created out of randomness but for a purpose? This leads us to a new subset of questions.

“What are His characteristics? Why is He not revealing Himself? What are His powers? What created God? What is the purpose of life?”

Every religion tries to bypass the complexity of such questions by providing oversimplified and vague answers such as “He is eternal. He will reveal Himself when the time comes. He has infinite powers. He cannot be created or destroyed.”

Again, all these sound nice. But they don’t answer the questions about God and man. It is really hard to answer such complicated questions with simple explanations. For instance, try to understand what is eternal?

Eternal is something which has no end or origin. It exists forever. But what is something that has no beginning or an end? Is something like that even possible? Again, if something like that exists, how was it created in the first place? May be by someother higher forms of living? If so, who created that higher form of living? Can we attain that higher form of living?

This paradox puts us in an infinite loop of “who created what and how was that created.” Such is the case of several other answers given by various religions. Human brain has been trained to think of everything as bounded and symmetrical. “Good – Bad, Light – Dark, Heaven – Hell, Life – Death, Begin – End, God – Demon.”

But whenever we encounter a difficult question and unable to think any further, we just break the boundaries and symmetries. That’s how religions define the existence and characteristics of God.

“Eternal, Omnipresent, Infinite, Fathomless.”

Another classic way theologists prefer to explain God is “by riding on the back of pseudoscience and scientific terminologies”. Often, people fall for terminologies such as mass, matter, energy, vibes, aura, space, cosmic radiations. One such famous quote is, “The concept of time, space, and matter emerged only after the bigbang. He is beyond space, time, and matter.”

This sounds convincing. But even if He is beyond all these, there are still questions to be answered. “What is the point of all these life forms? Why does the universe behave the way it does? Do we really need the presence of a creator to justify this complex behaviour of the universe? Are we limited by the capacity to think?”

There are no convincing answers to these. You can claim whatever you want as no one knows the answer. The existing theological arguments lead us to question the very basic ideology.

“Did God really create us? or We have created the Gods?”

I often think of this question as an unsolved puzzle given to a bunch of students in a class. Suddenly, some students claim that they found the answer and their solution is unique or only one. Instead of explaining their methods and instigating further research, they order everyone else to follow their approach and write the same answer. 

Likewise, in the past, several people from different countries have tried to describe God. But none of them seem to have succeeded. Instead of taking the philosophies further and questioning our existence, humanity was satisfied with the broken descriptions. “People were claimed to be Gods. The philosophies were propagated ‘through time’ as ‘religions’. People were made to follow the religions. And the religions were protected by the people.”

“With the advent of every new religion, the fear of suppression by one over the other increased. And as the fear of suppression rose, the faith in the religions were bolstered further to protect them from destruction.”

This whole attempt to describe God seems to be the biggest debacle in human evolution.

As a result, the question is still left unanswered.
Is there God?

I don’t know the answer now. But I hope I will find one day. But till then, there is no harm in assuming the existence of a good thing, a God, a universal spirit.

“Atleast for the sake of good hearted and weak-minded people who need a support to live their daily lives.”

– Pradeep

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