Do You Believe in God? Why it is a Difficult Question for Many?
“Do you believe in God?” If you ask somebody. The answer will vary form a definitive “Yes” or “No” to confused “I don’t know”.
When the answer is, I don’t know, what does it means, is this a wasted attempt to hide something? Or is it a week hint that the answer was never through or it can’t be explained in public but deep down you know what you think about God. Or perhaps you haven’t yet figured out how to define God? Where to start thinking so that you can explain it to others next time.
Asking bluntly “Do you believe in God?” makes a mockery of our beliefs.
A World With God is More Bearable, if Not More Beautiful.
People who answer in “Yes” or “No”, they don’t have to think deeper. You always come with some hypothesis based on all your previous learning, teachings readings and experiences. For those who have gone through real bad time, experienced immense loss and came back to normal life start believing in God. This could be an easy escape as they were not able to cope up with their lives and needed some invisible support with this “leap of faith”.
People are stuck with definitions, multiple religions, philosophies, occult science etc.
Dilemma of Definitions
Defining “God” and “Beliefs” is the case of limitless narratives around multiple definitions. The contemplation on your own definition of “Belief” and “God” can reveal how and where your definition fits into your belief system.
Once you ask the “Definition” of “God” of “Belief” you can’t hold yourself back without asking “Let’s first conclude the definition of definition”.
“What kind of God you are talking about?” this could be another question as if you can pick and choose from the menu.
Build You God With Your Own Definitions
There are chances that people who are confused can believe in God if you define it properly. Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, all perfect, all loving are few keywords that they would be obsessed about. Modeling God this way is a self-created trap you start believing in only to satisfy your mental model.
We Can Argue More
For some it has to be a heated argument and post that they will explain their side of the story and end up like “Hey I can’t prove it if there is a God, but can you prove there is no God?” Additionally these people are reading many books on after-life, occult science, chakras and tantras. They assume that by consuming more subject material will make them intellectual enough to discuss the subject of God. This way, next time, they will beat the argument better and quicker.
Darwin Readers, CEOs, and Lab Scientists:
These people don’t argue unless it is teleological argument , they think they have read enough complex books from the best authors and they can cross-check any difficult material on their tabs and kindles in no time.
They use metaphors from Lao Tzu, quotes from Buddha and Darwin. They avoid any personification of God and insist that God as “itself” rather than “himself” or “herself”. So much for the cliché.
God and Quantum Physics, is there any relation? Many scientists have said “Yes”.
Conclusion : God as a Placeholder:
We don’t have many answers. Watchmaker analogy sounds good but we are continually waiting for something better. Some are looking for God others just the evidence of God or a convincing theory.
Next time when someone asks you “Do you believe in God?” You could answer “I believe in Gnosticism, Gnosticism is the idea of knowing god rather than simply having faith in God. Carl Jung believed in it”. Gnosticism is another good placeholder until there is a more suitable one.
Preachers, philosophers, biologist have had their time defining and explain the “God” to this world, now Silicon Valley is tampering it with Artificial Intelligence based God.
If the answer is not important to you then there are many better ways to dismiss the argument. But remember absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
This argument about God and belief is okay to some extent even if you haven’t found the answer yet, keep looking but don’t push it in order to give “god a name”. Don’t box Him in.