Should you believe in a deity?

Chances are that you believe in a deity. But which one? And how come you believe in that particular deity. most likely you were indoctrinated (I doubt the deity contacted you itself.) Maybe by your parents. And this is probably because they feel that you need to believe in a deity. But why? There have been thousands of deities through history, which one should you choose? If this is the single most important decision of your life, then you want to make an informed decision. 

So do you need a religion or should you subscribe to one? Why should you? Well first of all, some would say the world was created by God. okay. So what? Even if the world was created by God why should I worship him and do what he wants? then they will say that it is because he loves us, and you can say so what if he loves me? why should I love him back, and Then they will say that this is because it is the ultimate goal of life. It is what God wants us to do and what he has created us for. And then you can say, so why should I do what God wants us to do? I can create my own goal in life And then they will say because if you do not worship him then he will punish you with eternal damnation, and if you do worship him then he will reward you with eternal bliss. Now of course you do not want eternal damnation, so you want to believe in and worship a deity. Notice how eternal damnation is the final answer to the question. Love, created the world, etc don’t cut it. So if you are choosing a deity, then it is basically because you want to go to heaven/do not want to go hell.

Apart from eternal damnation, it is also often conceived that God can better our living situations if we ask favors from him, so it is better you pally up with him so he can be on your side. This is like the bonus that comes with not choosing eternal damnation. And how can you do this if you do not believe in him in the first place? The problem with this is that every sect of every religion claims to be pals with God so going by testimony alone, one cannot conclude which deity to choose. However from the amount of suffering and pain in the world, we can easily logically conclude that God does not interfere with human activities. At least if we categorically state that he prevents tragedies through sincere prayers then we must also conclude that all the tragedies in the world that have ever occurred (think world war 1, world war 2, 9/11, etc) and all the people that have ever died from (or prayed against) such were not sincere enough, because I am pretty sure they prayed. No sane person would want to claim such. So If God does not interfere in some situations, then why would he interfere in some? And why would we think that we can influence which ones he chooses to interfere with by praying? For example, why do people think that God interfered to enable them get a job, visa or prevent an accident etc but that he would not interfere to prevent people from dying in the 9/11 attacks, or other terrorist attacks and natural disasters? What about people who didn’t get the jobs/visas or those who died from accidents? i am pretty sure they prayed too and those who succeeded did nothing different. Clearly, at least in my opinion, god does not interfere with human activities, or we cannot influence his choice to do so. If he chooses to do so erratically, then that reduces God from a conscious being to the roll of a dice. Then since we cannot influence him intervening on us, why should we bother to worship or pray?

It is impossible that all religions are correct in their own way. Because of the inherent contradictions. So it is most likely that one(maybe some) religion is the true religion, and the other religions are false religion. In fact most religions have sects which are basically different religions, then that localizes the problem to what sect is the real sect? is there one sect in one religion that has gotten it right, where all other sects and other religions are doomed to eternal damnation.? (the ultimate punishment for not believing in a deity or subscribing to a religion). Today, different religions herald different deities. The question is, should you subscribe to a religion and believe in a deity? Or should you stay non-partisan in religious matters? Let us examine.

You can imagine how much confusion it would be for a man, who hypothetically has not been indoctrinated into any religion since birth until maturity to choose a religion from today’s religions. And if he were to, he would examine the situation rationally and realize that if there are N number of religions in the world today, and since he has no way of confirming which religion is legitimate, and since he was not afforded the luxury of being indoctrinated (by birth for example) if he really wants to go to heaven, he should choose to practice all religions at the same time, so he is a member of all the sets. This gives him a probability of 1 of going to heaven, meaning that he is certain to go to heaven. And then which ever is right would take him to heaven. However, Somewhere, there is an unwritten rule, which forces this man to gamble and choose only one religion. Then he realizes that if he chooses any one religion, the probability that he is going to heaven after death is 1/N. As only one religion is right. Ofcourse this Is still better than a person who has chosen 0 religions. As 1/N is still larger than zero. Or so it seems

What is the prerequisite that says that a person must believe in only one of these religions. Or one deity. Mathematically speaking. If there are N deities, then an atheist does not believe in any of these deities. I.e to say an atheist does not believe in N deities. But, a religious person, who has been mandated to choose just one religion, now does not believe in N-1 gods, which makes that person almost as atheistic as the atheist. The only difference being that the atheist has applied the same logic which the theist applied to N-1 gods for not believing in them, to the one religion that the theist chose to believe in. An illustration, If you are a catholic and you do not believe in protestantism, mormonism, islam, judaism, buddhism, etc and all other religions in the world, you are almost the same as an atheist, except that he in addition to your unbeliefs, also does not believe in catholicism, why is that so strange? What is the rule that says you cannot believe in all religions, and you cannot believe in no religions, you must choose one? If you are a christian and you cannot comprehend why an atheist just won’t believe. You need to realize that it is exactly the same thing as you not believing in islam Or any of the many other religions.

A lot of people do not like to examine religion, but nothing is more apt than the saying ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. We should always critically examine everything we endeavor into. Seeing as modern religions were introduced to most countries relatively not long ago. What happened to all the ancestors, prior to introduction, who never knew these religions? are they ALL going to hell? going by the religion’s strict rules, the direct answer should be yes they are all going to hell, but in christianity for example, which panders to hopeful converts, the answer you would most likely get if you asked a spiritual leader this question is that, they did not know about god and hence they will be judged according to the lives they lived. (I am not sure what the islamic take on this is).

I find this very interesting, because the argument can be extended to adherents of other religions. In The case that one religion is the true religion, the practitioners of other religions can feel safe and have a bit of confidence that even if their religion is wrong, they will not suffer eternal damnation as long as they have a pure heart and they have been fair to other people(taking for granted that abiding to a religious faith automatically assumes that one is being considerate to their fellow man and lives a pious life).

If the deity will not interfere with your life while you are on earth, then you have nothing to gain/lose when you are alive for not worshipping him, since the only punishment/reward is in the afterlife. if the creator is lenient enough to allow people who have lived a good life, and who worshipped other deities(false religion) to escape damnation, then it seems like common sense that he would allow people who have lived a good life and not worshipped any gods at all(probably because they did not know which one was genuine) to avoid damnation too. why then would you gamble to choose a religion, which might be wrong, and waste your time serving the wrong deity? when you can choose no religion and still go to heaven(permitted that you are a good person)? 

If the creator will not interfere with our lives, while we are on earth. Why would he be interested with our souls after we die?  There are billions of humans who haven’t been born yet, where are they now? Are they waiting in heaven to be born, then die and go back to heaven or hell? were you in heaven before you were born? If a time existed before you were born, when you did not exist at all, just like all the people who haven’t been born now, why do you think that if you die, you will not go back into non-existence? common sense beckons that if we die we are going back into non-existence and this view should be championed until any evidence points to the contrary. Of course it is religion, there is no evidence. 

In conclusion, a deity who will not interfere with our life while we are on earth, or with our 'souls' while we are dead(as we catapult back into non-existence), is equivalent to one who does not exist and does not need to be believed in. Maybe he really just created the world, And disappeared after all. Whether or not he actually exists is a totally different question. I rest my case. 

How exactly were the holy books inspired?

Arguably, the most important book in the life of a religious person is the sacred/Holy book. This is supposedly the biddings of a deity passed down through his chosen messengers to adherents of the particular faith. It is thus not unusual to hear statements that back up people’s beliefs such as ‘my bible tells me’ or ‘the Quran says. For such a believer, whatever the holy book says is fact. And cannot be questioned. Although most believers will agree that the book was written by men, they would insist that these men were inspired by God and thus the book contains the words of God and should be treated as though it were written by God. This usually ends the argument, but we should endeavor to go a step further and ask these people, what do you mean by ‘inspired by God’?

When we say inspired in the casual sense, what do we mean? The Cambridge dictionary defines inspire as: 

1. to make someone feel that they want to do something and can do it:
2. to make someone have a particular strong feeling or reaction:
3. to give someone an idea for a book, film, product, etc.

Of course, if we substitute these meanings for inspired into ‘God inspired the Bible’. Then it trivializes the concept of an infallible book written by men(conveying the pure thoughts of God). For example, if we say that God inspired the writers of the Bible by ‘making them feel that they want to do something(write the book) and can do it’(from the first definition of inspire). Then it means that this is God’s only contribution to the book. It is the same thing as saying that my wife inspired me to write a book, (by encouraging me). That in no way says that everything in that book(The plot, the characters, the very words) are my wife’s ideas. the same thing happens if we use the second and third examples. That is to say that my wife made me have a particular strong feeling or reaction to write a book, or that my wife gave me an idea for a book. Perhaps the later usage reaches closer to the type of inspiration we anticipate for the Bible. God gave the writers of the Bible an idea, to write the books. ‘Write about your interactions with me, and the rules I have given you, and call it the bible’. this seems fair enough. but then there are troubles with this view of inspiration. For example, it means that the particular words that the writers use(which a lot of christians are big on, insisting that the original greek wordings of a passage are God's own very words), and the particular stories that the writers choose to tell us about, are their own decisions. Even more, how does this work when a huge part of the Bible is about events and activities that the writers weren’t even part of? How did God inspire moses to write about the creation, if he wasn’t even there in the first place?

Since the standard definition of inspire does not satisfactorily explain the inspiration of the Bible, then we could get a special definition of inspiration strictly to be used in terms of sacred-text-writing. Maybe a fourth definition. So what kind of inspiration is this and what does it mean. how exactly does it work? there are certain aspects of the Bible that we know how exactly God inspired people. A good example is through dreams. God visited joseph, Jacob and numerous others in dreams to pass messages. Infact, the book of revelations is John writing down his dream. So this is one way that God inspired people. the Ten Commandments, were written by the finger of God. Also the handwriting on the wall. These texts are therefore passed down to believers directly from God. is the rest of the Bible ‘inspired’ like this? ofcourse not. so how then?

My favorite idea of inspiration for the holy books, is from the TV show Heroes. Where an artist, Isaac, paints the future by doing drugs and losing consciousness, then his body unconsciously paints the future. And his paintings are considered ‘sacred’ throughout the show. Is there a religious version of this? Where God possesses a writer of the Bible, and he writes unconsciously, God’s very words? Or One can imagine God dictating the words of the Bible to the writers (it is actually a long-standing jewish belief that the first five books of the Bible were dictated to moses by God). Corny, but it’s viable. Did God sit the writers down and say word for word what they should write? If either of these were the case, then the Bible is truly the word of God. however it is generally agreed by bible scholars that each author of the Bible has a particular style of writing, which does not agree with God dictating and the writer putting it down verbatim. Or did God show the writers, each and everyone a vision(we already know that John was shown a vision for the book of revelations), and then they wrote what they saw? If this is the case, then there is still a problem. What about the writers who wrote about parts that they were involved in? What about mark writing about the events of Jesus. Or Paul writing to the corinthians? How did God inspire him to write a letter to them? Ofcourse there would be no need for a dream or a vision to write this. But then how does God curate what he has written? A simple solution to this problem would be that, for events which the writer was a part of, then as a servant of God, he wouldn’t need any inspiration. Being filled with the Holy Spirit, He can ‘Godfully’ write and it will be in accordance with God’s wills. Ofcourse there is yet a problem with this view, because first of all, what makes the letter to the corinthians then, any more sacred than say, ‘Rhapsody of realities(‘both are written by servants of God, to congregations, and with this view of inspiration, being a servant of God means that your words are in line with God’s thinking)? Or any other text/publication written by any other servant of God? Since his writings are in accordance with God’s will all the time. Why even then, is there a selection of inspired sacred books, by the church. Refusing to acknowledge some books (such as bel and the dragon) as inspired, even when other books by the same author are considered inspired?

Since we cannot look for a one cuts all definition of the form of inspiration supposedly used in the Bible. Then we can generously divide this type of inspiration into parts. One form of inspiration for The events written by people who recorded what they saw, this inspiration is that being servants of God, they would be truthful enough to record the events correctly, to the best of their knowledge. Another type of inspiration for the events written by people about things that were far from them, either in distance or in time, this form of inspiration would most likely have been a dream or vision (or possesion if you like) to the writer and then he recorded what he saw. and the third form of inspiration are those written by God himself. (the ten commandments and the handwriting on the wall are all that I can think of actually.) we have already seen the problems with each of these. however, if God could write some things that were so important out by himself, why not just write everything? Not to mention cases where servants of God, including writers of the Bible such as moses, clearly doing something that is contrary to what God has instructed them to do, and getting punished for it. How then can we be sure that every single word that they write, was that which was instructed to them by God? even taking for granted, whatever part of the Bible we are looking at, and whatever type of inspiration was needed for that part, we just have to take the writers words as true that it was inspired(Although the church might refuse, then in that case we refuse too!). We just have to take the words of Paul and co that they were being truthful. And we just have to take the words of moses and John that what they dreamt was not an ordinary dream but one from God and also that they have written it down truthfully.

In conclusion, when people say that their holy book is inspired, they rarely even know what they mean. It is basically an evasive tactic to deny the deeper questions of the origins of the text which is the basis of all their faith. The major problem with this is that a lot of religions are faith based. Your faith is based on the Bible, but your assurance of the bible’s authenticity is based on faith. This does not sit well with any rational observer.

Cognitive Dissonance

If you engage in arguments/discourses often, you probably are familiar with the term Cognitive Dissonance, because people tend to throw it around a whole lot. for such linguistic candy, it’s meaning is also beautiful. the wikipedia entry for cognitive dissonance defines it as 'the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is contradictory to their beliefs, ideas, or values; or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas or values'. but what really does this mean?    

Basically, The theory is that when we hold a certain belief to be true, and an idea which also seems true, but contradictory is given to us. we experience a discomfort, an internal awkwardness causing us to reject the new idea and look for some sort of justification for our current belief, even though this belief might be clearly shown to be wrong in the new idea which we rejected. in some severe cases, we reject not just the idea. but discard the argument completely. 

A typical scenario where one would encounter the use of this term is in a debate between atheists and theists, where the atheist accuses the theist of having cognitive dissonance and refusing any type of evidence pointing contrary to the illusory beliefs which the theist holds. and then the atheist declares himself the rational one. however the theist can also argue that, cognitive dissonance is an all too human characteristic. it applies to the atheist himself. for example, if an atheist were to have a manifestation from the divine, they would probably deny this to themselves, and even possibly claim that they are having illusions and are going mad, just to stay consistent with their own beliefs that the divine is non-existent. so, as a matter of fact, experiencing cognitive dissonance, and rejecting the new belief is not an altogether bad thing, indeed, this dissonance often aids the scientific enquiry.

What is it that makes the human mind want to believe and stay consistent with it’s beliefs? what is it that makes us cling to what we already know? why is it difficult to accept something different in the wake of evidence? why do we resist to atleast contemplate the possibilities in the presence of new ideas? why do we feel this awkward sensation within ourselves? for the scientific mind, when we experience Cognitive Dissonance, we analyze the situation and the conflict is resolved in favor of the option with the stronger case. NOT the one that came first. thus we accept new ideas even when they go against our intuitions(as in quantum mechanics and relativity) or abandon some (like string theory) depending on the strength of their case. obviously much progress can be made this way. 

The philosopher plato also talks about this in the Allegory of the Cave. in this story, some prisoners are chained from birth in a cave with their faces to the wall so that they are unable to see the opening and the world beyond it. They only see the shadows of objects passing by the cave, cast on the wall, and they build their ideologies of reality from this shadows. to them, the shadows are all that exist. one of the prisoner breaks free, goes out and sees that the world is different from what they have experienced. and that the shadows are not the real thing, comes back to share this enlightenment with his mates but the prisoners refuse to leave the cave because they are comfortable with their own idea of reality. the implication of this, is that a lot of people do not like their ideas/beliefs challenged. it makes them very uncomfortable. Plato concludes that the philosopher is one who would accept this new idea, leave the cave to experience the reality outside for himself, the curious mind, who gets rewarded by experiencing a richer form of life.

To understand the world, we need to understand ourselves better and to do so we must get rid of our biases and cognitive dissonance. knowing the problem, like they say, is the first solution. so perhaps the next time you are presented with facts that contradict your belief, instead of trying to justify your belief, or become aggressive you will at least be objective and analyze the situation, choosing the one with the stronger case. we must be fervent and rigorous in our pursuit of knowledge, we should refuse to be trapped by cognitive dissonance because our belief, as real as they may seem, might be based on false dogma, for example. when next you feel that awkward sensation of rejecting a belief, you can identify it and analyze it. get rid of the occlusion that is cognitive dissonance, and open yourself to the exhilarating thrills of epiphanies. perhaps this will bring us one step closer to discovering universal truth and peace.

i’ll end this with a quote from lao tzu. ‘To the mind that is still, the whole Universe surrenders.’

At ease.

why should we reject dogma?

Why do objects fall to the earth when dropped? and why do moving objects stop? is the earth standing on a turtle’s back? do you fall off when you get close to the ‘edge’ of the earth? 

In the previous millennium, these questions have been correctly answered beyond a reasonable doubt. but prior to this, what was the prevalent belief? well, Aristotle had answered the first two questions by saying that objects yearn to be reunited with the earth. and so when an object is taken away from the surface of the earth, it misses the earth, and yearns to return and does so. Aristotle also said that when an object is moving, eventually it will get tired. and it will stop running because it is tired. well we now know that these two answers are incorrect. thanks to newton and the scientific revolution. people will no longer accept something without reasonable proof. 

It is easy to see why people accepted the philosopher’s explanations. they were highly intellectual and thus they had a reputation for being wise, and they started a train of thought that has eventually changed the whole world. and so they are authorities in the field of thought. the greek philosophers believed that everything in the world could be discerned entirely by pure thought. they believed that just by thinking, one could come to comprehend everything in the Universe. Now, this in itself is not bad, but then they totally forbade experimental work. to Aristotle it was not Elite and there was no Utilitarian need for philosophy. so their musings about the physical world were not meant to be verified only to appeal to the thought. but it was amazing how these guys came to conclusions. there is the story of socrates and a slave. where socrates drew a diagram similar to Pythagoras theorem. and then called the slave, who had no knowledge of mathematics, and started asking him questions only and the slave answered these questions and thereby deduced Pythagoras theorem. C^2 = a^2 + b^2. and then socrates concluded that since this man had answered this question of this profound mathematical concept all by himself, then the man must have known this mathematical formula in a previous life. and just like that socrates ‘proved’ re-incarnation! 

These were the kind of thoughts and proofs that fueled the greek minds, and although they were highly intellectual people, remember that we are talking of a time before christ. their knowledge was limited, and a lot of speculations were treated as facts because they seemed reasonable enough. there were also philosophers of other aspects, other than the physical world. for example, philosophers on religion (theologists) who engaged in thinking about the spiritual world. and they came about answers as well. These guys (and other philosophers) had ideas that were propagated and then became the basis of knowledge for centuries. until the scientific revolution. when everything had to be redefined. and we had to know what was fact, from what was just a Philosopher’s over-thinking. within a comparably short time of this scientific revolution. the world has seen tremendous progress, insights upon insights and man kind has redefined what it means to be human. 

Sadly, the same has not applied to religion. because like philosophy which had a caveat that stopped people from doing experimental work to confirm claims, religion also has a caveat that stops people from discovering where it could be wrong; faith. so in religion, whatever an authority has said, faith attempts to stop us from doubting it, let alone checking if its correct. more so, it attempts to stop us from even admitting that it might be wrong. when we know this to be the case. A lot of people when faced with this dilemma dissociate from it altogether and focus on their religion’s holy book’s text, forgetting that these were also written by men, the religious Aristotle and plato of their times. 

Now there are questions that we also would love to learn the answer. does God really exist? what happens when we die? why should we be kind as opposed to wicked? can we really appeal to good forces to better our living situation? the answers to these questions which we have, just like the answers given by Socrates and Aristotle in their day, could be correct, as well as very wrong. (my money is on wrong though). However people have blatantly refused to investigate them. what makes faith worse is that faith is the direct opposite of reason. well, almost. and then faith itself has another string attached. if you flirt with the idea of even leaving it for a minute. you are going to burn in fire for eternity. now this is the reason why a lot of people would not even dare to. but just like falling off when you get to the edge of the earth was the most reasonable thing that came to a philosopher's mind. do you not think that the idea that in death, good people get rewarded and bad people get punished would have being the most reasonable thing that came to the mind of a theologist?

Since the scientific revolution overthrew the philosophy of the physical world. none such has overthrown the philosophy of the spiritual world yet and as such we still accept the thinking of these men as truth, and in some cases their writings have become the standard by which we live our lives.. but i think that just the way the investigation of the physical world has brought us a tremendous amount of progress, an investigation of the spiritual world would bring us profound peace, sense of purpose, serenity and harmony amongst many other things. and for this reason i implore everyone to be critical and refuse to allow the basis of your acceptance be just because of who said it. 

Happy Sunday.

First of all, i am not a writer.

Hi there,

so i finally got around with setting up a blog page. something i have wanted to do since about 2011, but always procrastinated. my friends got tired of hearing me say 'my blog is coming up soon' (quite honestly, i had to set this up today or forfeit a bet that i would not meet a deadline i had given my friends for the blog, so this is just a quick write up). yeah i am like that sometimes. but more about me later, for now let's talk about the blog.

the idea behind this blog is really simple, ideas. the blog is also about the love of knowledge and truth. as we are all familiar, there is no knowledge that is not power and the truth will set you free. so then, this blog is also about power and freedom. the topics of discussion will range from theoretical physics, through mathematics, general sciences, philosophy, and general affairs (basically things that i am interested in). the backbone of every discussion here will be pure reason and facts.

now lets talk about me. as the title of this post says, i am not a writer. i do not have the literary flair so if my style of writing bores you, bear with me and get the point *insert big grin smiley here* . i am not an amazing writer here to wow you with his amazing writing skills, nor am i here to impress you with my gigantic vocabulary. i am not interested in the use of big words, where simpler words would suffice. i am not interested in being insistently right, i love to be corrected.  this would be my first time writing, but my aim is to get points across. i might hardly have the time to proof read, but will do when there is time, so if there are any errors just assume that i did not proof read lol. i am a man of reason and so i detest dogma and all its cohorts. i believe that there are certain truths, which we can grapple for ourselves, if we only choose to think about it. so i always keep an open mind.

finally why a blog? i often have discourses with different friends over different topics and i know that there are people all over who also have such discussions and i thought that a platform for us to discuss at length would be useful.  furthermore, sometimes we end up talking about things that might have been settled in other instances. having resolved an issue before, it becomes bland to engage in it all over again, and so i thought about creating a blog where i could put whole discussions up for reference.

i look forward to my first actual post and your contributions. yes, yes i know you can't wait, me neither.

cheers!