We have always wondered about our existence. We have asked ourselves the most difficult questions there are. How did the universe come into existence? What was there before it? Is god behind all of this? Who created life itself?
These are the most haunting questions for humanity right now and we are doing everything we can to find the answers. Science has given us a good enough picture till now and the future will only provide more answers. But I doubt that we will ever be able to answer all the questions.
Of course, religion has this all figured out. God is credited with creating the universe and all life forms; an all powerful, almighty being who has the power to create and destroy whole universes.
A Vast Universe
The universe we have been able to observe till now is so huge that we can’t even fathom it’s size. Just imagine how huge the whole universe is. It’s simply unimaginable. Our brains just give up at that point. But a being that can literally create a universe, would have power so great, so unbelievably magnificent that I wonder if we even have words in our dictionary to describe it.
But this also begs the question of our significance in god’s “eyes”. Just how relevant are we to him and how much does our lives mean to him. Just look at it from his perspective.
He created the universe so he must be outside of it. So, from his point of view, there is this universe, which is made up of billions upon billions of galaxies, which all have billions upon billions of stars which in turn have innumerable planets orbiting them and on a tiny little planet called Earth, we are even tinier creatures roaming around like ants! We are literally like microorganisms on a speck of dust from his point of view.
So, with that information, we can ask yet another question. If we are too small to be of any significance, why would a god interfere in our lives? I hear people around me telling me that everything is god’s will. That, god dictates whatever happens to us and everybody else on the planet.
But doesn’t this belief have a basic flaw? If everything is god’s will, where does free will come in? And what’s even the point of existence if we are merely actors in a movie whose script has already been prepared. Doesn’t it seem illogical?
And this is not the only thing that doesn’t make sense. Let’s consider for a moment that everything is, in fact, god’s will. But then why would an all powerful god create evil in the world? Why would an all knowing programmer create bugs in his software? Why is there so much suffering in this world? People dying like insects every second. Why is it that the forces of evil have taken over our planet and are exploiting things and people alike for their own meaningless sake leading to suffering and torture for mankind in general.
Why would an all powerful God be cruel?
If everything is his wish then all the evil must be his wish too. And if someone says, that it is not god but humans who have done this to themselves, then that would mean that we have free will and then that would negate the earlier belief that everything is god’s will. It doesn’t seem to make any sense.
God is always shown to be a benevolent being who doesn’t have a shred of ill will towards anyone, let alone cruelty.
But when you take a look at all the religions of the world, you see that people are god-fearing and not god-loving. This is a huge generalisation but only to make a point.
If god is so benevolent why is everybody afraid of him. This is especially the case in my own religion, Hinduism. Since childhood I was told if I don’t behave a particular way, god would punish me, if I didn’t believe in god, he would punish me.
This fear of god just doesn’t justify the image of god, leading one to believe that somewhere down the line, we screwed up with our interpretation of what god actually is.
The Real God
In my opinion, god is not this all powerful being who created the universe and everything in it. He is the universe itself. A universal energy that hold everything in place and dictates the laws that everything follows. We would then be a part of god and not just insignificant microorganisms.
That would explain why we have free will in conjunction with the laws of the universe. (I always wondered if laws of the universe were the actual god’s will and that religions just misinterpreted it and applied it to human lives.)
This would basically mean that god is the very fabric of space-time and everything is simply floating inside it. It is all just nomenclature at this point. And it would mean that the evil present in the hearts of many in this world, is not the result of god.
Many of the beliefs we have today, based on religion, are a result of centuries of misinterpretation, doctoring of facts for bigger agendas and the philosophy of divide and rule to keep humanity fighting each other forever. And God has nothing to do with it.