Friday, February 27, 2009

The 'oneness' of God

Growing up as a muslim, the idea of more than one God seemed absurd to me. Who in their right mind could believe that there could be more than one God controlling the universe? This is an appealing idea. The Quran also says something to the effect that if there were more than one God, chaos would ensue in the universe. The belief that God must be 'one' was useful to me in that it allowed me to rule out a lot of apparently 'false' religions. But upon deeper reflection, there are problems with the notion of 'one' God.

There are several arguments through which we can justify the notion of more than one God as not being out rightly absurd:

1. We tend to anthropomorphize God -- we attribute humanly qualities to him, and we don't have any justification for that. The statement that the Quran makes assumes that Gods have human like qualities, that if there were more than one, they would fight for power, like humans do. This seems like an unreasonable assumption to make.

2. If no one has seen God, then every one is basically entitled to whatever he wants to say about God. We don't have any way of deciding who is right or wrong. Whether that God has three parts, or he manifests himself through hundreds of different ways, or is just one, we don't have a reasonable way to decide.

3. The notion of 'one' implies that something is a unity -- a single being. We treat many different things as 'one' in our daily lives, such as the chair you are sitting on, the table you are working on, and yourself. But none of these things are truly 'one'. They are made up of many many different parts. We just happen to treat them as one because treating them as a unity is a useful mental abstraction. We tend to treat ourselves as one, but our brains consists of millions of neurons, which change their patterns of connection from moment to moment -- something that you can hardly treat as a unity.

4. Given that nearly none of the things we encounter in our daily lives are true 'unities', and are always made up of different, even opposing parts, the notion of multiple Gods, such as in Hinduism, might actually make a lot of sense. There is a God for war, and a God for peace, a God for hate, and a God for love, and they all work together to balance out these different forces.

The point of these arguments is make you rethink about the 'obvious' and 'evident' truth of your position. It is to make you realize that the other positions aren't as absurd as you might have originally thought. Given that all of these positions can make sense, it becomes very difficult to decide which one is the right one.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Condemned to be free

"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does." -- Jean-Paul Sartre

The realization that there is no rational reason to believe in God is quite a liberating one. The realization that the reasons we usually use to justify a God are logically hollow is comforting and reassuring. They make you feel free and light.

Freedom doesn't come without a price though. You start to feel this immense sense of responsibility. You, and only you, are responsible for your actions. There is no God to whom you can conveniently put the blame on when things go wrong. Things aren't as God meant them to be, and not everything happens for the best.

Suddenly, the meaning of your life isn't something you are given, but something you have to ask and determine yourself.

Humans want freedom, but I don't think humans equally want the responsibility that comes with it. It is as if humans want to be controlled, to be ruled over, because that makes them responsible for less. This perhaps explains part of the universal fascination with super natural and controlling Gods.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Worldwide web of belief and ritual

Humans have a strong need for emotional and spiritual fulfillment. The need to revere, respect and to be in awe of the sacred is an age old human desire. We need to make sense of life, to build bonds of love, and to cope with the inevitable change, loss and suffering that life brings. We all feel the need to answer the question: "What does it mean to be human?". Through out our rich and varied history, humans have answered this question, not in one or few, but as much as in 6000 different ways.

While this clearly points to the need and place for the sacred and spiritual in human life, we can also clearly see that the humans are vulnerable to falling prey to believing in unreasonable things without any evidence. Humans are highly susceptible to conflating the spiritual experience with religious beliefs. Because something gives us spiritual and emotional comfort, it must be true -- nothing can be farther from the truth.

I want to share this beautiful presentation by anthropologist Wade Davis in which he discusses a few exotic beliefs and rituals from different parts of the world.



This should make you realize that the spiritual and the sacred are not the domain of any one religion. They are fundamental experiences that humans yearn for. It should also make you stop and realize that you should not conflate and mix genuinely spiritual experiences with unreasonable religious beliefs. Sure, humans have usually had such experiences with the help of religious beliefs, but these experiences don't depend on the nature of the religious beliefs -- they are independent. This should make you stop and think whether you too are committing the mistake of regarding your religious beliefs as true, just because they give you spiritual fulfillment, as humans have done for years and years.

Its about time we start seeing the repeating patterns in our history, and stop having unreasonable beliefs. There are other ways of having experiences that we yearn for. The answers lie inside of us -- we just have to quieten our minds and listen to ourselves.

Location dependent truth

Our religion and faith depend heavily on where we happen to be born. Sure, we all have our arguments of why our religion is the right one, but if we honestly take a deeper and objective look, they can easily fall apart. Being a muslim, I believed that my religion was the "one true religion". I will be discussing why those arguments were very subjective and weak in the coming posts.

Here I want to share a short clip in which Dawkins contrasts the nature of religious and scientific knowledge.



If your version of reality is strongly dependent on where you were born, then be skeptical .... be very very skeptical!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

God and me

All of us with religious inclination build deep and meaningful connections with God. That connection slowly becomes a part the core of our existence -- it is the one thing that remains solid and permanent while everything may change around it. It gives us strength, courage and hope. It stands for all the goodness we see in this world, for all the goodness we want to see in the world, and stands in direct contrast to everything that is wrong with this world. It has the power to move us deeply; it has the power to move entire societies in to the service of God. It has the power to make us cry, to make us leap with joy, to make our hearts melt with compassion, to make our souls rise with hope. That sacred relationship is a living testament of all that is good and noble about the human race.

I had a strong and deep connection with God. I knew I was weak. Very weak. So thoroughly dependent on his sustenance and forgiveness. Every success came from him, and so did every failure -- as a test of my faith. The world was a dark place; unpredictable, uncertain, chaotic, painful. But I was hopeful. So very hopeful. No matter what misery came, I knew I could always turn to him for strength and hope.

Such was my relationship was God. The one thing I was sure would remain constant in the face of all the change. It defined me and I was defined by him.

Its a beautiful relation. I don't mean to take anything away from its beauty. Its a sacred feeling that everyone should experience. It has a beauty similar to the love of a mother for her child -- perhaps more intense.

Doubts started to appear in my heart regarding the existence of God. Some of a factual nature, others of a moral nature. I knew the God I loved and prayed to, but his commands didn't always reflect the picture I had of him. All loving and just -- as I had envisioned him to be -- but his written word didn't always reflect that. I saw contradictions. Parts of it felt morally and ethically wrong. A part of his creation was condemned to his wrath -- I happened to be the lucky one who was born in all the right conditions to help me lead a life he apparently wanted me to lead. I can go on and on about what caused doubts in my heart, but thats not important right now. What is important is what I did about those doubts. I could have rationalized them away, but I knew that if God was anything like I had envisioned him to be, he would not want me to rationalize them away. After all, I associated values of truth and honesty to him, and I was just being true and honest to myself.

I was in internal confusion; in internal turmoil. I knew God would help. He did. The God I knew came to my rescue. I instinctively knew that I had to separate the God I knew and loved from the God I was having doubts about. Strange as it may seem, it seemed like the perfectly right thing to do. The God I loved was defined by the values I cherished, and the God I was having doubts about didn't share all of those values. I knew God would show me the right path. This separation of my personal God, the one I prayed to, the one I loved, helped me think clearly; it helped me stay sane and objective.

Time passed. My doubts grew. My religion, or any religion for that matter, did not make sense. There was a period when I felt lonely, very lonely. I felt dirty. I felt betrayed -- ironically by the very God I loved and prayed to. I wanted everything to be alright again; I wanted it all to make sense again. I wanted to forget all about it and go back running to my God. But my love for truth, humanity and justice didn't allow me to. I knew the values I stood for. In my hearts of hearts, I knew that the God I prayed to didn't stand for those values. It was sinful to indulge in wishful thinking; to pretend that things were right the way they were, when I knew they weren't. Intellectual and emotional weakness in the face of mounting evidence and arguments was a sin I wasn't ready to commit.

Then, gradually, but surely, I realized that the God I wanted, loved, and prayed to was still with me. He was still very much a part of me. He always had been. He defined me, and I was defined by him. Only this time, instead of being "out there", that God was "in here". The values of truth, honesty, compassion and beauty were values that were intrinsic to me. They defined me as a human. I wasn't dependent on a super natural being for what was an inseparable part of my core. This realization was a transformative one. It instantly transported all the properties I attributed to a super natural God right in to the very fabric of my existence. I knew I will always have moments of weakness, but I also know that I have all the supply of love, courage and indomitable hope I will need right inside of me.

There is a famous line in Genisis:
"God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him"

This line reads much more truer when its reversed:
"Man created God in his own image, in the image of man, he created him"

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

My story -- in brief

I will be discussing some of the reasons that caused doubt in my mind about religion. There were many things that kept me loyal to my faith, and I will be listing out some of those, but I always felt that I was ignoring the things that disturbed me. I never got satisfactory answers to them, and they remained in the back of my head.

There were many many reasons to believe. Religion plays such an important role in our life. Sure, it talks about super natural things, like angels and heavens, but most of us don't give it a second thought. Who cares? God says so, so it must be. We are taught, and in fact, to a large extent, religion does, give us values which help us differentiate right from wrong. Religion gives us a path way through which we connect with God; satisfy our need for spiritual fulfillment. In addition, if you live most of your life in one country, the truth of religion is the last thing you question, similar to how the last thing a fish notices is water -- its everywhere!

Religion provided me with immense comfort and security most of my life. I believed because I wanted to believe. I was honest in my belief. I had questions, but I had faith that God was all powerful and just, and he doesn't do injustice to anyone.

I believed because I was convinced that my religion was the right religion; the final word of God.

I believed because the notion of a higher power provided me with security and comfort. He was someone I could turn to in times of need and despair.

I believed because I could not explain the sheer beauty and magnificence of the world around me. I attributed all of this beauty and elegance to a creator which must be much more elegant and beautiful.

I believed because my beliefs were generally useful to me. They provided me with an island of certainty and serenity in a sea of uncertainty and chaos. They helped me make sense of this world. They provided me with comfort that everything will be alright in the end, that good will triumph over evil, that no good deed will go unrewarded and no bad deed will go unpunished. They helped me make a spiritual connection with a higher being, a tether I could latch on to in the face of winds of uncertainty.

So why did I feel the need to question my beliefs?

Many reasons. They never bothered me up to a certain age, but I really started questioning things a couple of years back, and these things became more and more troublesome.

I was bothered by how religion makes such ridiculously detailed claims about the nature of the universe, and expects you to believe them without any evidence. Islam, and most other religions, claim an entire different realm of the super natural, with a God, with angels, a devil, a heaven and a hell, a heavenly chair on which God resides and a host of other super natural baggage.

I was bothered by how followers of every religion followed their religion on what essentially amounted to blind faith. Religion, by its very nature, was not amenable to rational thinking and argumentation.

After interaction with people from various other faiths, I was convinced that they too were convinced of the truth of their religion. That was a scary realization. I realized that the arguments I used to justify the rightfulness of my religion were very weak and subjective.

I was bothered by how religion colored the perceptions of its followers, and how that had the potential for immense social harm; people could believe in anything they want on the grounds of blind faith. They were accountable to no one but God.

I was bothered because I didn't find any seriously good reason to be a muslim if I weren't born in a muslim family.

I was bothered by the fate of most non muslims, who were condemned to hell based on effectively where they were born.

I was bothered by the fact that some of the teachings of my religion were in conflict with what science had to say about the world. The more I appreciated the scientific method, and the pains that the scientists and scientific community goes through before making a claim, the brazen certainty with which religion states facts, which often times contradict with science, became more and more unsettling to me.

Science doesn't answer, or not yet anyhow, answers to some of life's most pressing questions. Why are we here? Is there a purpose to life? How did this all come in to being? How will this end? My religion did provide me with answers to these pressing questions, but I realized that those answers were hardly answers; they begged more questions than they answered.

In the face of these arguments, I found it highly dishonest of me to continue to profess that my version of reality was the right one.

The most difficult challenge for me was my personal relationship with God. I had become emotionally addicted to the notion of a caring and loving god. It was amusing, yet unsettling, to realize that people of all religions experienced the same connection with a higher being, be it Allah, Jesus, Vishnu, Zeus or Thor. The religion didn't matter. The nature of God(s) didn't matter. Regardless, the emotional ties I had built with God were in danger -- this disturbed me to no end. Humans have a need for emotional and spiritual connection. People fulfil those needs through human connections, and by praying to and worshipping to God(s). Given all the arguments against the veracity of my religion, I had to be courageous and question my blind belief in God. I do think that most people are disturbed by facts and contradictions in religion, just like I was, but their connection to God is so strong that they don't dare question it. They rationalize all of it away.

The relationship with God was one of the most difficult parts in renouncing my faith, and I believe this is the sole reason, or the primary reason, that keeps most people loyal to their faith despite knowing its weaknesses and contradictions. This is an important enough, and broad enough, topic that I will be discussing more of it in a future post.

I don't have answers to everything, but I feel content and satisfied, emotionally and intellectually, knowing that I don't say or believe in anything whose veracity and morality I cannot convince myself of. I feel like I have been released from the shackles of my own thoughts and desires. I feel relieved. I feel free.

The following sums up my feelings quite well:

"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." -- Carl Sagan

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Welcome

Hello visitor,

I am a 20-something desi who hails from Pakistan. I have been a devout muslim most of my life, but I started questioning things about three years ago. Like most religious people, I was content and sure of the veracity and truth of my religion, and never once thought I could question it one day. It provided me comfort, guidance, values and, what I initially thought, a comprehensive way to look at this life and universe.

Over time, to my utter surprise, my faith has been shaken and dismantled to the extent I never thought possible.

I thought I had answers to everything, but it was humbling to realize that I knew very little. Over time, I have found it extremely arrogant of religion to make so many claims about our world with virtually no evidence. Letting go of the values and beliefs I was raised with has not been an easy experience. It has taken a lot of courage to doubt the certainties I was raised with; certainties, which even though appeared absurd and immoral at times, were re-assuring nonetheless.

This difficult journey has been a very personal one for me. I plan to share my experiences and tribulations through this blog; to help people in a similar dilemma as I was, to have meaningful conversation about religion and belief, and lack there of, and to persuade people to honestly re-evaluate the basis of their deeply held and cherished beliefs.

I have also been disgusted with the rise of religious extremism and intolerance in my home country -- Pakistan. I dream of a secular and free Pakistan, where it wouldn't be tabboo to hold any religious belief, or no beliefs at all, and a Pakistan where all humans will be treated with equality, dignity and respect irrespective of their faith, color or creed. A Pakistan where the ideals of equality, freedom and opportunity will unite and bind us together instead of narrowly construed religious dogma. A Pakistan based on humanistic values of love and compassion instead of one based on the superiority of one religion over the rest.

I hope to have meaningful conversations with my readers; conversations which enlighten and inform me, as well as enlighten and inform you, and at the very least, make you consider the possibility of a world free from all forms of superstition, discrimination and intolerance.

Happy reading!