“God = Faith”
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What is God?
Abhimanyu: God, the higher power, the Almighty, the grand wizard or any other name you want to use – is an unquantifiable, formless and nameless force that is beyond scientific explanation and yet is the most believable unseen, unproven phenomenon that has ever been or ever will be. No one, including me – will ever be able to answer this question conclusively and explain what, or who God is. In fact, the more we try to explain it, the more stupid we’d feel (maybe without admitting it) as we go on in our endeavor to construct a half decent response. We can do a lot of speculation and use probability but we’d stay just where we began.
As for my answer, I would say that God = Faith. God is what and whom you believe him to be. It’s something you believe in, beyond doubt and without conclusive evidence – a little like believing your wife (or husband) when she/he tells you that you are deeply loved. It’s something that you believe in because you want to believe in it – it gives you a purpose to live and to do things. Sure, your spouse does things like caring for you, worrying for you and making sacrifices for you and that confirms your faith in the professed love, but a doubter could say that all such acts are a well put on charade too, right?
God or the Big Bang (or both)?
Abhimanyu: Both. I’m no scientist and not for a minute would I even try to discredit the Big Bang theory which was derived after much research over many years. My reasoning is that each and everything in this world is scientifically explained – be it evolution, Big Bang, relativity, etc. However, what do you make of the fact that everything in the universe and more specifically in the space around us is designed just perfectly for life to survive? The composition of the atmosphere, the distance of the earth from the sun, the amount of water on Earth – make even a half percent of change in any of these factors and POOF! No more life! All this has to be pre-determined and put to effect by a smart, scientific force. So, what I’m saying is that the Big Bang was designed by God to happen in the precise way it did and the pieces scattered in the exact positions that were meant to make life on Earth possible millions of years in the future.
God or Darwin (or both)?
Abhimanyu: God designed it. Darwin realized, theorized and popularized it.
God or Darfur ? (How can Darfur happen if there is God?)
Abhimanyu: Darfur, Armenia, the world wars and all the genocides, cultural riots, can and will happen again again because there are always greedy people with a hunger for power. It has nothing to do with God and everything to do with Man.
Who is God’s God?
Abhimanyu: God himself, just like everyone of us, is his own man.
Will the real God please stand up? (Why do we have so many religions?)
Abhimanyu: Let me make one thing very clear – Religion and God are two totally different things. Man was created by God, and religion was devised by Man as a way to worship, follow and find God. Putting a religion, any religion – over and above God is like saying that an expensive guitar is more important than the music it was meant to make. There’s only one God like there’s only one music; there are different genres depending on the difference in instruments and techniques used to play the sound; just like there are different names given to God in different religious books through different stories, but in the end, it’s all music, isn’t it?
Is this just a big lab and are we just guinea pigs and God just a researcher?
Abhimanyu: No. It’s a big garden where we are flowers and God is the nurturer.
Unexplained phenomena = God?
Abhimanyu: Absolutely! It was, is and will always be an eternally unexplained phenomenon. You, me and gazillion others after us will keep speculating and posting in Q & A threads till the end of time or whenever the next Big Bang happens. But the fact is, at the end of the day, the only ‘proven’ truth is the one we believe in when we say our nightly prayer.
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take a bow everyone, for the next deepak chopra !
Pretty neat answers .. I like the concept of God = Faith as it is always a matter of trust without logic. Well said Abhi!
God is an inadequate concept when applied to the known and a superfluous concept when applied to the unknown. Existence is relational.