God is the Creator, who created among other things you.
"He it is Who created for you all that is in the earth, and He directed Himself to the heaven, so He made them complete seven heavens, and He knows all things", as the Qu'ran states.
God Created this universe one day and it's been "this universe" ever since.
God made this universe so it will evolve to the point of one day you asking who He is, so good question.
God gave us all free will. This means we have the state of mind to do whatever we want to.
With our free will, we are free to define the world around us. As we look at the world around us we see perfect order- we see galaxies and planets and leopards and atoms and it all fits together. Except for us, because we have free will.
This is because He made the universe for us- for self-aware beings like us. And dolphins and whales and aliens too.
As humans, we are free to choose between good and bad or right and wrong because of our free will. A lion in the desert is not evil because he eats Gazelles- that is in his nature; if he did not eat Gazelles, he would starve to death.
We are perfectly free to live a good or a bad life, but ultimately we have the ability to define ourselves; we are free-willed.
Now, did God make the universe so good can triumph over evil? Of course not- God is God, after all- if He wanted, he could simply wave "bad" away.
But if you wiped "badness" away, you'd be left with only "goodness", and with nothing to compare goodness against, goodness ceases to be goodness.
Next, who are you? What exactly defines "you"? It's most certainly not your body- your body is definetly not you.
If I cut your legs off, would you still be you? If you were a quadraplegic, would you still be you? If some mad scientist kept your head alive in a jar, would you still be you? And if he transplanted your head on another body, would you be you again?
"You" clearly are somewhere in your head. Your brain, to be precise. "We" are nothing more than our brains. And one further- most of the mental activity going on in our brains is automatic- if you had to remember to do everything your body automatically does, you would die.
"We" are nothing more than the sum of our two pre-frontal lobes. We are nothing more than electricity, housed in a thing called a human being.
Does this mean we don't exist; that everything is an illusion? Of course not- we really do exist, it's just that "we" are trapped in our human bodies for the moment.
When "we" die, our mind is free from our bodies to move on to another level of awareness. A simple way to look at it is that reality is an arcade and you put in a quarter and live a lifetime. Then the game ends, you take off your goggles and move on to the next game.
Next question- "Why doesn't God XYZ for me when I ask Him to?" Because if God appeared everytime you called Him, this wouldn't be reality anymore, this would be a TV sitcom. Put it this way- if God walked in your front door right now and sat down and answered every question you have for Him, gave you a trillion dollars in gold then left, what would you do next?
This is where the video game analogy comes into play- if you're struggling with a part of a video game you're playing and you go online and get the cheat code to make it really easy, don't you lose interest soon afterward? Wouldn't life become boring after you realize it really is nothing but a video game?
And this is where "God's Philosophy" comes into play. There are many books and schools of thought that all teach God's philosophy- they're called religions. None of them are perfect because all of them have been made by human hands (with a little help, of course) and here's how religion works:
Imagine you can sum up every religion there is or ever was to one sheet of paper. Collectively, it will be an encyclopedia of religion.
But since no human philosophy is perfect, all logical conclusions therein will in places have holes in them- holes- as if a bookworm is worming its way through the book randomly.
Over time, the book gets very holy. "Where is God in all of this" you ask? If you hold the book up to the light at the right angle, you can at times see clearly through the book. When you see through the book, you are looking directly at God.
So why is God being so elaborate? Because that is the beauty of God- God's job here is make sure there is no God! Think of reality as the ultimate amusement park and God is the big guy running the show. Your job is to go on the rides and God's job is to make sure you enjoy yourself. To that end, God put together the ultimate amusement park- it's called "our universe".
If this is the case, then why do we struggle? Because this is reality and we have free will. This means there is causality: the bad actions have bad outcomes. As the Buddhists believe, the cause of suffering is want; to remove desire is to be in bliss.
Is our suffering something we brought onto ourselves? Most of the time, yes. But sometimes people are asked to carry heavier burdens. There is a payoff, but these things are beyond human understanding.
What we do know is that since we have free will, we are perfectly free to explore and discover God ourselves. There is no such thing as "a man full of religion"- religous desire is inherent to humans, if God did not exist, it would be neccesary to invent him.
The world is your to explore and find answers from. Since God exists everywhere all the time, you are free to discover God yourself- whether through science (whatever they can't explain is God), math (God is at the end of pi), art or music (God is definetly cultured), history (God leaves footprints over time) and even car driving (God always pulls over to help change someone's flat) and waitressing (God loves a banquet!)... God exists in the perfection of things because God is perfect.
And if you STILL can't see the beauty of God in things then look at the beauty of ALL things.
Now who is God to you? God is that little voice in your head. You know- that little voice in our heads that's constantly telling "we're doing the right thing!" or "this is the wrong thing".
God is that desperate voice a man hears right before he dons a ski mask and robs a bank. God is the wave of self-satisfaction we get when we help someone out. God is that imaginary person that listens when we have doubt. God is that feeling we get deep in our gut when we realize we are "getting away with it". And at the same time, there are people who are so desperate that God can only appear to them as a handful of rice.
God is your drinking buddy who never gives up hope on you. God is the anonymous stranger who left you a ten-spot while you were sleeping on the street. God is the light at the end of the psychodelic tunnel. When you come to the end of reason, whatever is left is God.
If you do not hear that little voice in your head, then that means God has stopped talking to you. If you can walk past that homeless man with apathy instead of pity; if you spit the ground you walk on then God has stopped talking to you.
Why has God stopped talking to you? In reality he hasn't- it's just that you have turned that part of your brain off... you simply stopped listening to Him, like the way you'd ignore the hum of an air conditioner that over time you don't hear at all.
This is because you have free will- you are perfectly free to ignore God and get away with it, at least until inevitability catches up with you just as you can logically conclude God does not exist. But the miracle of it all is that He exists nonetheless.
In truth, I pity the man who truly believes God does not exist- such a person must truly and utterly fear his death because he knows he will confront his maker- he just has to know it... just look around you!
Such a person is like the video game addict who, even after beating the game a hundred times still gets satisfaction from it- he is utterly bland and tasteless, he will spend the rest of his days right where he is learning nothing new and accomplishing nothing.
Or perhaps even worse off, he truly believes that when he dies, nothing will happen. Such a person is living a totally useless and meaningless existence, may God help him.
As Ghandi writes: "I know the path. It is straight and narrow. It is like the edge of a sword. I rejoice to walk on it. I weep when I slip. God's word is: 'He who strives never perishes.' I have implicit faith in that promise. Though, therefore, from my weakness I fail a thousand times, I will not lose faith, but hope that I shall see the Light when the flesh has been brought under perfect subjection, as some day it must."
So how can you hear God again? Just start listening again.
19 Jul 2006, 1:26 am
Religion plays on evoloutions mechanism to keep people happy and deluded while they procreate and live their lives, some people without religion would simply kill themselves or be much more miserable and it would have profound effects on how they behaved in their day to day lives to the detriment of their survival and happyness.
