Is there God? - 1) The big question

Is there God?

While atheist only counts for less than 5% of world population in 2005, by 2012 these numbers increases to about 18% of world population. There recent growth in population, raise a serious question: “Does God exist?”. Not only because the statistic becomes more significant, but also because I think this is a significant question that we need to answer in the search of the truth of reality. The answer to this question is the presupposition of other many theories and teachings in most fields of study including philosophy, science, morality, etc (which we will discuss later in the future :D ). 

Furthermore, the implications of the existence of God or non-existence of God have a great impact on how we see our lives and the reality we live in. If God exists then we can continue on the next question, what sort of God is He? Are any of the existing religions true? If God does not exist then where do we come from? Who am I? How we should live our life depends a lot on the answer to this question. If God exist and you convince yourself that God does not exist, you are delusional. Similarly, if God does not exist and you convince yourself that God exist, you are also delusional. And delusional people tend to meet dire consequences. If you convince yourself that you can walk over the air (while you can’t really) you’ll end up falling over the cliff.

It’s quite interesting that only few people seem to bother asking areas that are inconvenient to them especially when there are other like-minded people that they can already feel belong to. The religious people afraid to asks “What if God does not really exist?” and the Atheist and the non-religious people also similarly never think it through “What if God does exist?”. I would like to encourage you, to think it over with me...

Now, having said that determining the existence of God is important, finding the answer is not that easy and many arguments and debates have become too much to bear for some people. The arguments surrounding the existence of God range from the logical, emotional, hypothetical, and even irrational. Seems like, as a result, many people become fed up and decides to be ignorant about it. I think, however, this issue is too important to be ignored.

Before we can move on, however, we need to clarify one thing. When we talk about God in the sense of “the existence of God”, we have to limit this to the “true God” category.  We do not care about the man-made God, because a created God is not God at all. Stone, nature, mountain, crafted idol, myth or mighty and wise man are not what we mean when ask “does god exist?” These things are just things that are made God by man. So when we ask “does God exist”, it is quite important that we should actually refer to the true God. “Does the ultimate, non-created, true God exist?”

More importantly, for the sake of usefulness, the question could be phrased further into “Does a true God, of which affect my existence exist?” There is no point arguing about the existence of a god that is just there, sitting at the corner, not affecting our life. How can you tell the difference between a god that does nothing, and nothing? in fact, It will not matter whether that sort of God exist. However, if there is a God that created us, that interact with us, that may punish us, or rewards us, that we are accounted to in this life or after life, then it’s a different story.  

Therefore when we ask the question "does God exist?" not all that mention god or gods (and the variation) actually answer in affirmative manner. See the table below:

The question of “Does God exist?” cannot be satisfied by an answer along the line of “Yes, we are God”, because it would actually mean “No, there is no God, We are the judge of all things”. Thus we also should not consider the answer of the middle group as an affirmative answer because the teachings of the religions in this middle group do not actually propose God that is truly a God. For example, if our ancestors are God, then it is basically a person that has been worshipped “as” god. And we should not worry about it since we will become God too eventually. If nature is God, then we also should not worry about it since it does not really have a personal will – it’s only the law of nature. If it is said that men are gods that is at the moment trapped in an illusion or circle of rebirth then it simply means “No, there is no God, except us”. None of the Gods concept in the middle group is truly God, the gods are more like evolved or superior version of man at most – but not God.  

So does God Exist?

To be continued... (part 2 coming up!)