On God and Religion

I have always believed, and continue to believe in a Creator of the world. As a kid, I thought of God in the traditional sense that I have been taught to believe, and as a kid I didn't like him. I didn't like His erratic behaviour and anger spurts. I didn't like his constant need to want my prayer in a certain way, using certain words at certain times of the day. I didn't like the idea that we are all in this less-than-perfect world because Adam and Eve ate from a forbidden tree. Billions of people were deprived of heaven, and forced to live in a world of limited resources, desease, famine, war, and constant struggle because Adam and Eve were duped by Satan to eat out of some stupid tree.

Humanity paying such a hefty price for something they didn't do never struck me as an act of a fair and wise creator. And then you look at what is being done in God's name on this earth, and you see further signs of this rather unjust and unkind behaviour. I didn't like all the death and destruction in the world, particularly that done in His name, as if He was deriving some preverted pleasure from seeing us kill and subjicate one another.

I never rejected God because I have always believed that nothing comes from nothing, and therefore something had kick things off in such an immaculate and well calculated way that lead to the creation of this vast and undeniable intricate universe which we still know very little about with our limited capacities. The laws of probability dictate that all of This could not have happened by accident. And thus I lived most of my life not being able to reject God, and yet not being able to like Him.

What the big three Ibrahamic faiths teach about pre-life, why are we here in this life, and what will happen to us in the afterlife did not seem to be the work of an all-knowing divine being. The Quran says "I did not create the Ins(Humans) and the Gin(angels) except to worship me."

Wow! Is this some sort of an divine inferiority or superiority complex of some sort?

Maybe I couldn't deal with the fact that this being had the emotional maturity of a dessert tribal leader with severly unfulfilled emotional needs. I couldn't reconcile the science of evolution with the fairy tale of Adam and Eve that seemed flawed and irrelevant. I couldn't reconcile the perfection of the universe with the erratic, vengeful, and even psychotic behavior of the God in the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran.

I owe a great deal of gratitude to the Bahai faith for offering a more realistic and compelling explanation of life and of God that at once put the love of God in my heart, and made me feel betrayed by all of those who speak in His name. In the Bahai faith, you don't have to belong to any particular religion to be admitted into heaven or saved from hell. Indeed, the Baha'is don't view heaven and hell as physical places, but rathers as spiritual states of closeness and distance from our originator. The closer we strive to fill our lives with His light, the more we experience a state of heaven, and the reverse is true.

The Baha'is believe that God created the world out of love for it, and that he loves us all equally. It is up to us to love him back by striving to be better people and helping make the world a better place. We don't have to accept anyone to be saved. There is no standardized test that we have to pass, or certain admission requirements... In the Bahai faith, no murder in the name of God is ever justified. No war is ever acceptable. No domination is ever permissible. No disrespect for others can be in the name of their creator.. No one better than someone else because of their faith.. Life is about unity with God and the universe and it creatures.. It's about peace and harmony.. It's all about all love!

While I am not Bahai (I came extremely close to becoming one), I couldn't do it. The reason being is that the more I closely investigated the faith, the more I realized that they have their share of dogmas, superstitions, and limitations. At the end of the day, I couldn't believe in an institution that believes in the infallibility of any human or any institution, and one that proclaims the elimination of all prejudice while prohibiting women from serving in their highest institutions. It seemed that if there was any religion that can operate beyond the confines of dogma and blind obedience, the Baha'i faith would be it. My experience is that this is not the case. Nevertheless, the explanation Bahaism offered of the world and its Creator truly quenched the image of God that Islam, Christianity, and Jewdaism have distorted in my head. the idea of a God who loves us unconditionally like a father, is something I deeply believe in for the following reasons:

1- It gives me peace of mind that when our time is up in this life, we all will have a caring "parent" to take care of us on the other side, much like a new-born is scared when born but is surrounded by loving and caring parents when he/she arrives into this world. It's an entry into the loving arms of God and a re-unification with those who we love that preceeded us, instead of an entry into the court room of a vindictive, arbitrary tyrant judge, judging all of humanity at the same time, and looking for some excuse to eternally torture as many of them as necessary to fill the hell He constructed.

2- It makes it clear for me that my disdain is not for God, but for the institution of religion. I reject all Abrahamic faiths' explanation of God. I believe all of their books, even if they were divine at "revelation," were manipulated and distorted to the benefit the powerful, not to communicate the will of God. It is the institutions of religion that take away the reason and free will that God gave us and molds into ways that serve the few by scaring and coersing the many in His name the identity they created for Him as an insatiable torturer.

When I was able to openly reject religion, I felt closer to God. Because now, I see him as a loving parent figure of whom we are essentially the same spiritual, yet watered down and distributed essence. Therefore, all of us can and do know him by instinct and by experience, but only in a limited capacity. He probably wanted it that way so that we can all combine our collective spirits so that we can all better understand Him, and realize his love by loving one another. Some of us may see Him in science. Others see him in art. Some call him Allah.. Others call him Evolution or cosmic chance... You can think of him as the Eternal or the None.. the One or the infinite... It doesn't really matter, and we probably will find it all reconcilable and true when we transition into a different realm. I don't think that anyone can know God fully because we are limited by our short span of life, limited knowledge, biology and physical needs, phsycological baggage, fears, and biases. At the end of the day, None of us will pass the God exam, and there will either be a big curve for everyone, some sort of a remediation process, or something that none of us can understand now that is far more important than the exam itself. One thing that I am certain about is to love God, not fear Him.

The world is very complicated (at least some times), and there are too many distractions and too many messages all claiming to be the truth. I think that as a loving God, who knows our limitations, He will let us revise our answers and resubmitt them for extra credit. We will get a letter that says: "congratulations. Here's what you have gotten right, and here's where you were so close but missed the mark. As a person who has transformed out of your earthly form, you are now ready for the next journey. Enjoy it."

Finally, I want to share two funny skids (yet full of truth) by George Carlin about God and Religion. I can completely understand and respect why he is an atheist, and I agree with his sentiments on organized religion.

Enjoy!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SyWEBbFwU1o

http://youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o