Does god exist? no one knows for certain, though many will theories and say god exists not, and many more will quote obscure religious texts that are thousands of years old to prove their point that god exists.
No matter how one looks at this question the only real answer is that the belief in god is one of personal preference. Who am I, or anyone else for that matter, to say that god exists or not. I do have an opinion though, and my opinion is just that; an opinion.
I have thought long and hard about this question on my quest to quell my existentialist crisis.. Read book upon book, research upon research, consulted philosophy book, religious texts, and scientific experiments and knowledge, discussed things with priests, imams and rabies. In the end I came up with a tentative conclusion; it does not matter if god exists or not, what matters is if we believe in such a supernatural entity or not. God does not have to exist for us to believe in him, or her, or it. This is the foundation of faith, the belief in something greater than us mere mortal humans, even if this thing we believe in is not tangible or evident. Faith, over the last few millennia, has proven to be a source of, both, good and bad deeds. Faith has unified people and nations, faith has helped us evolve from our primordial existence by providing us with something greater to aspire to, and faith has taught us to differentiate between good and evil. But faith also has a dark side, and this is more a human trait than anything else. Humans have this unsavory talent for taking a good idea and turning it around for their own personal benefit. While faith emerged as a tool of communication, like any tool it was misused. Individuals, mainly priests, kings, and would be despots, used the power of faith under the false pretenses of unifying the people but in reality they used this powerful tool to subjugate their followers. Pharos became gods, pops became god's representative on earth, kings were given divine mandates to rule on earth in the name of the lord, people of different faiths or opinions where made to be scapegoats, persecuted and slaughtered in the name of a lord once though merciful.
But I am getting ahead of myself. In my long search for the identity of god I came to a point where I asked myself a very important question; what is religion? Looking up the word at dictionary.com resulted in the following definition
"a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose ofthe universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotionaland ritual observances, And often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs."
Which is in itself a good, albeit short, explanation. Not satisfied with this answer alone, I searched further and analyzed my finding and eventually I came up with a very obvious conclusion. No one knows for sure when the idea of faith/religion (whatever you want to call it) came in to existence. Some say that the idea started when man (or pseudo man or woman) began to contemplate his or her inevitable mortality and began a ritual that exists to this day; the ritual of burier. Though cave drawing that are thousands of years old, if not more, also hint at themes of belief in the supernatural. Man (or Woman) began to develop the idea of faith, god, religion, the moment they began to ask questions about themselves, their environment, and most importantly, their existence in this world. I was relieved to know that my existentialist crisis is not something knew nor recent, that people have been asking the same questions for millennia.
Faith began the moment man (or woman) start to question everything. Where did we come from? What makes the sun move? What is the sun? How are we born? What are the stars? What lies beyond the stars? What happens to us after we die? Questions that we still ask ourselves to this day in spite of the gargantuan amount of information, knowledge, and experience that we have accumulated since the first time these questions where ask tens, if not hundreds, of thousand years ago. Faith, religion, call it what you like, came in to being when man (or woman) attempted to answer these questions. Religion, faith, call it what you like was born out of the need to discover and explain the unknown. The Sun was observed to be both a giver and taker of life, and since the ancients did not have the right instruments to analyze the sun scientifically, they naturally gave it human attributes and called it a god. Likewise with the moon, the sea, the formation of mountains, the reason behind disease, famine, vitality and death. Shamans, priests, holy men, medicine men where the prehistoric equivalent of our current day scientists... they theorized and set out to prove and disprove their theories. Much of what we know about ourselves, the earth and all its inhabitants, the solar system and the universe, started out when these early human or proto human pioneers set out to explain the unknown to satisfy their need to know and learn and survive in an otherwise harsh world, as the world used to be before we started making tools.
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but curiosity was the driving factor behind the evolution of human kind.
Sadly, some of these pioneering ancient would be scientists, became enthralled with their own ego and their made sure that their discoveries where set in stone as absolute divine truth. And our animalistic nature to dominate and be dominated evolved from being animalistic to becoming more elaborate and more.... human.... with all that this term entails.
Rituals mushroomed, traditions became a reality, and change slowed down. The minute an idea becomes rigid and perceived as truth our evolution is stifled. Every time and question was satisfactorily answered; It became ingrained in the minds of men and made it hard to change, more often than not under threat of death. Just like the earth was once considered to be flat and the center of the universe until the likes of Columbus, Magellan, Ibin Sina, Copernicus, Darwin and many more proved falls without, a doubt, one concept after the other. Even then, it was not easy to change the minds of a population so indoctrinated in to the old ideas by priests, kings, and leaders who's base of power was threatened by such new discoveries. Unfortunately, more often than not, these greater pioneers where regards as heretics and where persecuted and forced to denounce their own scientifically proven discoveries as heresies.
So what is religion? religion is man's (or woman's) attempt at explaining all that is or was unknown, writing down, or passing on an oral account, their findings in terms that humans back then could relate to; giving the scary unknown human characteristics, human stories, human thoughts, human ideas. So the idea of the divine was born at the hands of humankind and holy texts became one of humanities earliest attempts at scientific discovery, flawed and limited as it was.
Fabricated or not. The idea of god and the ideas in all religious texts are not false. Nor are they bad. But they have been badly abused and distorted beyond recognition over hundreds, if not thousands, of years. A “holy” text that was written by the hands of men thousands of years ago with rules and rituals that with all likely hood made perfect sense thousands of years ago probably have no relevance in our day and age. Some rules, some beliefs, some rituals and traditions no longer hold credence or relevance today. Old and obsolete traditions and systems of belief where assimilated by religions as Christianity expanded in Europe and Islam in the Arab world, in order to make the religion easier to accept by the local occupied or assimilated population, and have now become totally irrelevant and counterproductive. Religious traditions need to be updated to reflect our current times from the perspective of the present and not the past. The past exists for us to learn from, not to live in at the risk of making the present a miserable existence and the future bleak.
Religion is not a duty to be completed. Rreligion is a personal system of beliefs that can be shared with others but that should never be imposed on anyone unwilling to adhere. Faith is not a necessity, it has its psychological well being benefits, but everyone is entitled to have it or not to. Everyone is free to believe or disbelieve in the existence of god as he/she/it is commonly understood from ancient texts or through some new idea and definition of the unknown. As long as no one infringes on any others rights or preaches intolerance or hate then one is entitled to be as religious and as adherent to whatever doctrine they choose too. People are also entitled to be as hypocritical or as genuine as like, the only condition is that they should respect the beliefs of others and not infringe on anyone else rights.... not even their own children.
When we are born in to a specific family, we are taught, by default, the traditions, beliefs, and doctrines of that family. Children are considered the property of their parents and thus un-voluntarily recruited in to that system. Children born to a Christian family are taught how to be Christians, children born in to a Muslim family are taught how to be Muslims and so on. This is a travesty, a transgression on the rights of these children as the choice is made for them. Very few allow their children the right to choose their own religion or set of beliefs. And because this choice was taken away from them they grow up with all the defects of their forefathers and mothers, doomed to repeat the same mistakes of history over and over again.
Granted that religion teaches our children an ethical and moral code, however, religion has grown in a way that it also teaches children how to be intolerant to others and to mock and discredit those of a different set of beliefs. Such a scenario is all too evident in country like Lebanon where 18 sects share a land mass no greater than 10,500 sq KM. I think it is a travesty that we do not teach our children all about morality, right and wrong, different systems of beliefs at school and instead we opt to indoctrinate them in to the religion and dogma of our forefathers and mothers, regardless of the relevance of these teachings in our current day and age. We infringe upon the human rights of our children by denying them the right to choose on their own what religion or set of beliefs they choose to follow.
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