Believer Perspective

By Oqla

BP offers a modern interpretation for the creation and the fate of the world. It provides clear definitions for the various spiritual and religious concepts including God, spirit, soul, afterlife, judgement day, end of times, space, time, demons, right and wrong, etc., and weaves a story that links all these concepts from the beginning of time until its end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oqla
• Release date: May 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224482603

Book preview

I-Introduction

Wafa: As you know, I came from a religious family. My parents weren’t scholars. They only believed in God, and I suspect, they believed in God without really asking themselves any questions, or may be, they just ignored the questions, because it was not well perceived by the community.

Safa: I also have the same background.

Wafa: The only problem with this, is that I, unlike my parents, don’t have this blind faith. It is not that I don’t want to have it, it is just that I have serious doubts about the religious assertions.

Safa: Did you try talking to a scholar in religion?

Wafa: I tried many scholars, but the answers I got from them, were very vague and not convincing at all.

Safa: Is that mean that you don’t believe in God?

Wafa: It would have been great if it was that easy.

Safa: Why is it complicated?

Wafa: These questions and research for answers started when I was a teenager. Then when I reached my twenties, it was clear to me that God didn’t exist, and all religions were schemes made to trap ignorant and gullible people. I was happy with my conclusions, and I thought that I will live my life as an atheist with a good ethic code, without having to follow strange and illogical rules made by people who lived a long time ago, in a very different society.

Safa: So, for you the subject of religion and God was closed.

Wafa: This is what I thought, but I don’t know why, my mind didn’t really accept this conclusion. 

Safa: Your mind is just trying to make you miserable. It doesn’t accept religion and God, and it doesn’t accept atheism. You should, maybe become agnostic.

Wafa: I considered that option, but the reason I didn’t accept theism or atheism is because I didn’t have convincing answers to my questions. And as you know to become an agnostic, you need to be able to accept that you can’t have any convincing answers, and thus just ignore the entire subject and continue with your life. I wish I could do that, but it doesn’t seem to be an option, for me.

Safa: After you concluded that you are an atheist, what happened that made you reject this belief?

Wafa: I don’t reject atheism. I only think that I don’t have enough arguments to completely dismiss religion and God.

Safa: Why is that?

Wafa: When I read mystical literatures, and when I see people like you, who seem to have made peace with God and religion, I wonder if I might have misunderstood religion.

Safa: When you have an inquisitive mind, like it seems to be your case, you also need a lot of patience to make peace with God and religion. The process is lengthy, and it needs a lot of dedication, as you might know from reading mystics biographies. Answers to your questions will come progressively. You will need to have faith in the process, and wait patiently until your questions are addressed. Just like with science, when you want to become a doctor or an engineer for example, you need to study for several years. The questions you have on these scientific fields won’t be answered all at once. You will need to be patient and eventually, you will start acquiring knowledge. This acquired knowledge will help answer some of your questions.

Wafa: I know that you have an inquisitive mind as well, and I suppose that you have gone through that lengthy process to get the answers to your questions.

Safa: I wish I could say yes, but it is not the case. I still have unanswered questions, but I reached the conclusion that questions are part of life and they help us direct our research and progress. What I can tell you is that with a lot of reading, dedication, and patience, I eventually get answers to some of my questions, but with the new acquired knowledge, came new questions.

Wafa: Could you please share with me the questions and the answers that you got?

Safa: I can’t do that. It will only confuse you, as my questions are different than yours. However, if you want you could tell me what are the questions that are bothering you, and I’ll try my best to answer you. Just bear in mind that this is my interpretation, and what convinces me, may not convince you.

Wafa: That sounds good.

Safa: All right then, let’s hear your questions.

Wafa: Do you want to hear one question at a time?

Safa: No, I prefer to hear them all, to see what I could answer.

Wafa: I don’t remember them all, but I‘ll do my best to describe my main concerns.

Safa: That’s perfectly normal, and I also expect that you will start remembering your questions or having new questions when we start tackling your concerns.

Wafa: Ok then, here are my big doubts about religion and God.

Almost all religions, ask their followers to request help from God by praying. They also claim that God is unchanging, beyond time, and totally independent from its creation. This seems to be contradictory, as if God is capable of answering prayers, performing miracles, and rewarding good acts, which are events occurring at specific times, it means that God is actively interacting with its creation, and taking decisions based on human behavior. If this is the case, then God changes over time, and this change depends on human acts. God might have been invariable before the creation, but after the emergence of the creation, if we claim that God is actively interacting with its creation, then it is not clear how we could explain and maintain that God is not affected by its creation. In fact, if you believe that the acts of human make God happy, sad, angry and so on, you are asserting that the creation is affecting and changing God. Not only that, but the act of creation in itself, is a change in God, as a decision on creating the world has to be made at some point, followed by the act of creation. These two primordial events are a change in God as they weren’t there in the pre-creation era, and then they emerged at some point. This may only be solved if we accept that the cause of this primordial change in God pre-creation state is an external agent, but as religions also assert that there was nothing outside God in the pre-creation era, this becomes a paradox.

Safa: Ok, so the first question is about the immanence, transcendence, and absolute independence of God. What’s the next one?

Wafa: My second question is about the omniscience, benevolence, and omnipotence of God. If God is the ultimate good, and is all knowing and all powerful, how could God permit evil to exist? More specifically, how could a God with such attributes, allow the suffering of animals, children, and innocent people?

Safa: Interesting question. Do you have more?

Wafa: Yes, I do. And the next one is about the justice of God. This attribute seems to be inconsistent with the concept of fate. If fate exists, and every human is forced in a certain path, how could humans be judged by God, on acts out of their control? For me, justice is incompatible with fate. Justice is based on freewill, but if you don’t have choice, and your actions have already been decided by God, as most religions claim, how could you be justly judged for something that was imposed on you?

Safa: It is a fair question. What is the next one?

Wafa: The need for faith. I just don’t understand why we need faith at all. Why can’t the all-powerful God reveal itself to us, and remove any doubt about its existence? Faith is not something you can command. You either have it or you don’t. I , for myself,  have a lot of reservation on anything build on faith instead of clear evidence, as it gives me the impression that it is built on shaky ground, and it is trying to conceal a structural default. 

Safa: I was expecting this question. Are there any more?

Wafa: I still have a couple of questions.

The first one is about the concept of eternal punishment in the hereafter. I don’t understand why does the compassionate God creates the human beings and subject them to this world full of temptations, evil, diseases, losses, etc., and then punish them because they fail to live a sanctified life, dedicated to an invisible God. In addition, almost all religions require from the followers to have faith in a hidden entity. Most religions also promise hell to anyone that doesn’t have faith in their God or follow its command, even if the person doesn’t commit any major sin. As there are many religions, most people tend to follow their family or their cultural beliefs. Not everyone has the interest, the time, and the intellectual capacity to explore all religions and make a conscious choice about the God to worship. Even those who do venture in this task, as all the religions have their share of opacity and contradictions, it is hard, for them, to discern between the right and the false religion. Most believers convince themselves that their religion is the right one, and try very hard to dismiss any doubt that may rise about the foundation of this assertion. But if they don’t make the right choice, they will be eternally damned. Same thing for the atheist and the agnostic. They are sincere in their belief, as they are not convinced by any religion, and this alone makes them a perfect candidate for hell. All these facts are not compatible with a compassionate, merciful, and just God.

Finally, my last question is about the need to worship God. I don’t understand why God needs our allegiance and worship. If God is independent, and merciful, why can’t humans receive favours without requesting anything in exchange? Moreover, if this was the intent of our creation, why is it not natural and easy for us to totally submit ourselves to any entity, including God?

Safa: I believe that these are the classical arguments against the existence of God.

Wafa: I know that my questions have already been asked by a lot of people in the past, but since there were no decisive counter arguments against them, they are still valid.

Safa: I think that the best way to answer your questions is to give you my perspective on how and why the world was created.

Wafa: That seems like a good starting point, but I must warn you, I’m familiar with most of the creation stories, and so far, to me, they all look like very bad fairy tales, that cast more doubts on God intentions and the religions in general. I really hope that your creation story will be different.

Safa: I hope so too, but I just want to make things clear. I’m not inventing a new creation story, I’m just giving you my interpretation, of an existing and well known creation story.

Wafa: Maybe this is what I was missing, someone who could provide a realistic story, by deciphering the symbols, and calling things by their names. Let’s try it.

Safa: You are setting the bar very high. I have never pretended that I have the keys to unlock the secrets of the religious stories. I will only give you my perspective on religion and God, based on my background and understanding.

Wafa: Let’s hear it

II-God and the First Being Brought into Existence

Safa: At the beginning there was only God.

Wafa: This is a very loaded statement.

Safa: Why?

Wafa: First of all, what do you mean by God?

Safa: To me God is an infinite being, who was, is and will always be existing.

Wafa: If he is existing, does this means that he occupies space.

Safa: I see that you are already using he to talk about God. We could refer to him as "he’, to keep our conversation simple, but we should always remember, that he is neither a male nor a female.

Wafa: Understood.

Safa: Now, you were asking me if God occupies space since he is existing. The answer is no. Space is meant for finite being, as it is a way of limiting and confining something. And since God is infinite, there is no space that could limit and confine him.

Wafa: For now, I will accept that there is this infinite entity that you call God, who always exists in a realm where there is no space, just to allow you to continue your story, but I reserve the right to question this assertion later.

Safa: Ok. So, God is always existing, and there was nothing with him.  For a lack of better wording, let’s call this state, the existence state.

Wafa: All right.

Safa: If we can conceive the existence state, it shouldn’t be difficult to introduce the non-existence sate.

Wafa: Sure.

Safa: The non-existence state is divided in two groups. The first group is constituted of members for which existence is possible, and the second group is constituted of members for which existence is impossible.

Wafa: I suppose that we are only interested in the group for which existence is possible, as we can’t get any information on the other group.

Safa: You’re right. We just need to concentrate on the group for which existence is possible, and we will try to describe its members.

Wafa: It is difficult to describe these entities with our language. You are trying to describe something that doesn’t exist, and you can’t do so, without using the verb to be, which refers to existence.

Safa: I’m happy to see that you caught that, and hopefully you will let me use the verb to be to describe a non-existing entity.

Wafa: I can’t see any other way to continue our discussion on this subject.

Safa: Now that we have an understanding, I can speak without worrying about the language I use to describe this entity. This being said, if we say that the entity is non-existent, it means that it is neutral.

Wafa: I’m not sure I’m following you.

Safa: Well, it is like when we talk about zero.

Wafa: What about it?

Safa: Zero may mean nothing, and it may also mean the combination of a positive number and negative number of a same value. The first case corresponds to the group for which existence is impossible, and the second case corresponds to the group for which existence is possible.

Wafa: By neutral you mean the combination of opposites.

Safa: Thank you, this is a very elegant statement that simply explains what I was trying to describe.

Wafa: You’re welcome.

Safa: This non-existing entity composed of a combination of opposites possesses another feature.

Wafa: What kind of feature is that?

Safa: It is God slave.

Wafa: Now you lost me.

Safa: Why?

Wafa: You said that it is non-existent, but if it is God slave, it needs to exist.

Safa: Not necessarily.

Wafa: Care to elaborate.

Safa: Let’s take you for example. You can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. And you know that you have these abilities because you have already seen an image, heard a sound, smelt an odor, tasted a flavour, and touched an object. So, unless there is an external stimulus that brings to existence these abilities, they are non-existent.

Wafa: What you are saying, is that the external world brings the vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch to existence, and without the external signals, these abilities lay in the realm of the possible.

Safa: Yes.

Wafa: Now you are contradicting yourself.

Safa: How?

Wafa: You just use the zero example to show that the non-existence state is composed of the absolute void and the combination of opposites. I don’t think that the vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch could be represented by any of these two cases.

Safa: The entities belonging to the realm of possible are in neutral state which is equivalent to zero. This means that there is no way to differentiate between these entities as they annihilate each other.  The entities belonging to the realm of possible don’t have the ability to bring themselves out of that state. They need an external agent to bring them to existence. Without the external agent, they stay in the non-existence state.

Wafa: This looks like a master-slave relationship.

Safa: It is, and this is why, I told you that the non-existent entity, that we were trying to describe, is God slave.

Wafa: If this non-existent entity is God slave, does it stay in this state until God activates it, and brings it to existence?

Safa: Yes. And he does so, through his word.

Wafa:  When you say word of God, is this mean that this infinite entity can talk?

Safa: When a limited entity, encounters an infinite, unlimited entity, it could only perceive what its limited abilities can grasp. So, in this case, we could say that God gave an order to the entity, because this is how it was perceived by the entity, but we could never say that this is similar to our way of uttering words. For example, when you talk in front of a tape recorder, a camera that doesn’t capture sound, a vibration captor, and a lamp, the tape recorder will capture a sound, the camera will capture the movement of the lips, the vibration captor will capture a change in a certain frequency spectrum, and the lamp will not capture any change.  Each equipment has a different perspective of the event.

Wafa: Ok, I got that.

Safa:  Let’s continue then.

Wafa: When you first started talking about the creation myth, I thought that you were going to tell me that the world is an emanation of God, created when God started thinking about his own existence, and thus we are just an idea of God and not different from him, created unintentionally by God, you know the usual story told by most philosophers and mystics. But now I see, or at least I think that by introducing this non-existing slave entity, you will be able to separate God from the world, while keeping the supremacy, the freewill, the absolute existence, and the act to God.

Safa: Don’t jump to conclusions just yet, we still have a long way to go.

Wafa: Ok, then. What happened when this non-existent entity heard the word of God?

I suppose that it needs hearing faculty to hear the word of God.

Safa: Yes, it does, and as we said earlier it is a dormant or non-existing faculty that is activated the moment the order of God, the master, is received.

Wafa: What did it do when it heard the order of God?

Safa: This order created a big shock in the entity and resulted in the separation of its opposite constituents, that were up until now combined and in a neutral state.

Wafa: By opposite sides do you mean good and evil?

Safa: Not necessarily. They could be a passive and an active sides, or two poles attracted to one another by a certain relationship, and when they found each other, they get annihilated.

Wafa: And how would you describe the first entity that God brought to existence.

Safa: I would say that the constituents of this entity were two poles that attracted and annihilated each other.

Wafa:  So, now we have three existing entities, the one you call God the infinite, and always existing, and the two slave lovers.

Safa: We could call them lovers, for now, if you want, but we should remember that they are only attracted to each other. They are not necessarily bonded by love.

Wafa: From my perspective, attraction is love. So, let’s call them lovers, unless we found out that they are bounded by another relationship.

Safa: Ok then. Let’s do that, but remember that this was your suggestion.

Wafa: Sure.

Safa: When the slaves were brought to existence, one of them falls in love with God and abandon the other lover.

Wafa: What kind of lover is this?

Safa: Their relationship could be viewed as bonds linking two entities. These bonds are formed when the entity seeking something finds it.

Wafa: Not a very good definition of love, but let’s say for now that it is acceptable.

Safa: Our two lovers were content with each other and found exactly what they were looking in each other, so they bonded together and get annihilated.

Wafa: Is this mean that they existed before God gave them the order to be?

Safa: No, they didn’t. It is just my way to explain their relationship. They were always bounded together before coming to existence, as this was their natural state.

Wafa: It is difficult to use our language to talk about these