The problem with people nowadays in relation to God and religion is the way they work it out; more often than not people start the wrong way around. People have the habit of first looking around them at things they comprehend and see and then trying to work out what they cannot see. Let me explain, people always look at the world around them and from it try to deduce the spiritual world beyond, so they look at the earth and try to deduce if heaven exists. This method usually does not provide good results, because whatever the deductions seem to be, they’re always incomplete. Starting out with what you see can lead you anywhere. The better approach would be to assume that there is God and see what the results will be, or assume there is no God and deduce how things should be, then perhaps match it with what you have and from it determine what you’ve assumed wrong.
Of course some people claim they have made the assumptions I stated above, but have failed to work in that direction. Let’s take for example how people approach religion, first they take the words of any religious book as the absolute truth, and from it they work what God is like. This is a very dangerous approach because when assuming there is God, there can be no absolute guarantee that the book they’re reading is His word, and so the word of God gives a wrong impression about God to those assuming he does exist, and totally disproves the existence of God (in some cases) to those assuming he doesn’t exist.
(A very good example of people saying unreasonable things can be found here)
All this might be getting boring and a bit complicated.. I think it’s a bit too dense but here’s what I mean, it would be much simpler to assume that God doesn’t exist and then reason as to how the world will be like. It would be much simpler to assume that God does exist and reason what the world would be like in his existence and what His words will be like. If we try to imagine what God would do if he did exist it will save us a lot of trouble, and perhaps then we can reason His words.
A debate struck up between me and a friend of mine in which I asked him about something. So the first thing he answered me was “God said so”. Now I don’t know about you, but this word infuriates me a bit, because at a time when people are claiming God said so many things, you can’t base this as a source of your argument. I mean with so many books and so many theories, let’s use that brain God gave us, he must have given it to us for a reason. Perhaps not to understand everything but just enough to understand whether what we’re being told can be true. So I told my friend, don’t explain to me by telling me God said so, explain to me why God said so or would say so, let us reason why God would say this and let us reach through the little logic we have why God told us this. So we sat down and examined the issue from a social point of view, psychological point of view, scientific point of view and we reasoned that God has a reason for saying this and that.
You see that’s the problem I’m talking about, people keep telling you because God said so.. and while I know God must have said some things, I know that there are some means of understanding part of God’s wisdom. It’s all about working the right way, sometimes working backwards can give you an illogical god or even a contradicting god.
I’m not going to get to detailed examples of what I mean but let me try to show something. Let’s assume there was God, and there was a devil. Now what would God do to help humans and what would the devil do to counter that plan assuming as well that we had free will. I suppose that God would probably give people instructions on how to live and what would be good for them, but the devil’s technique would be to cast doubt on those words, and the best way for people to get lost is to be confused and not know what’s right from what’s wrong. It’s like psychological warfare I suppose, each country releasing a set of press releases and you can choose which to believe. Of course there are signs that tell you which is true and which is not.
I remember the war in Iraq, there were many statements made by the States regarding the battles and there were statements made by Information minister Saeed Al Sahaaf of Iraq regarding the same war. They were both conflicting and yet one was true and one was not so true. I guess at some point people choose which they want to believe, what they wish to be true, or what they were raised to believe.
So the point is simple, it’s all about the approach. Whenever people reason as to what God might say, someone comes in and just says: No you infidels, God said so and so and so and so as if it were definitive.
To top this all off, I must add these excellent links for both believers and non believers. It’s just a few things to show that theology is not that trivial.
If you think believers are naive click here.
If you think non believers are idiots click here.
Many people approach God and religion in what I view as a wrong way, but hey.. it’s my blog and the only opinion that really matters is my own.
2 comments:
Excellent take!
Thanks..
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