"Is man merely a mistake of God, or is God merely a mistake of man?" - Friedrich Nietzsche
The nature of man is imperfection. So man's creation of a god would therefore be imperfect. If god does in fact exist, then his choice to create an imperfect being and then punish him for said imperfections is bizarre and imperfect within it's own right. What does that say of a god that supposedly knows all? He would inevitably know the folly of his creation (even before it's creation) and nevertheless he chooses not to "directly" intervene within our lives, therefore sentencing countless souls to an eternity of damnation.
- A god that bases your eternal life on your faith in thousands-of-years old stories rather than on the goodness you develop within yourself is not a god of love.
- A god that would condemn souls to "hell" rather than make himself known to all of mankind so that we would KNOW the truth (versus "believing" a truth) and thus know that we should be "saved" is not a god of love.
- A god that would create us knowing that we would eventually need to be saved, lest we be eternally damned, is not a god of love.
- A god that would create angelic-beings that would eventually "fall" (and then tempt us with "doubt" and sin) is not a god that can create perfection. Thus his nature too seems to be imperfect.
I began by saying that man is imperfect and if he were to create a god then this god would inevitably be imperfect. I ended by saying that god (at least how he is described and understood within various religious beliefs) appears to also be flawed: imperfect. The implication of this (that there is an imperfect creator and an imperfect creation, whether this creator is god or man) does not necessarily mean there is no god, but it does mean that what religions (and their respective followers) currently believe to be the truth is not logically sound.
If hell exists and a creator would choose to condemn the souls of his creation to this terrible place simply because these individuals believed the wrong thing or made the wrong choices then he is not a god of love--it's sinister to create people with the knowledge that many of them will suffer for eternity. Such a god could rectify this by providing personal, direct intervention within every person's life on a global scale (proof of his existence and his truth), so that people could make the "right decisions" that would lead them to salvation (Christians believe they are saved, Muslims believe they are saved, etc. --yet how do we know which path will actually lead us to deliverance?) By not providing definitive proof, god himself creates doubt of his own supposed existence, it doesn't come from a demon ("fallen angel") attempting to deceive you in order to make you fall.
If hell does not exist alongside heaven then there is no need for salvation: one can enter paradise by believing or not believing, or by following a different religion altogether--and if this is the case then what is the purpose of subscribing to a religious doctrine? Furthermore, if one can enter heaven regardless of his or her faith, then is one religion "more true" than another? (Yours? Mine?) In the end, what would we define as the truth when it still cannot be definitively proven? How can we discern this without the use of rational analysis? For example, we could ask ourselves "Do the teachings and practices embody love or do they create some form of separation?" This is much more effective than the use of faith-based responses: "Their religion is wrong because my religion is the absolute truth." And if we now have to confront this question of whether a religion is "more true" versus "the truth" then what happens to the substance of a religion? People tend to join a faith because they believe the teachings to be truth, but if now these teachings are merely "more true" than another (or up for interpretation) then is it not possible that all the religions that currently exist may be wrong, even if only slightly?
Is religion, in a way (though much more radical), somewhat like science?--religion too evolves: "Theories" are formed and people believe them to be true, and once a theory or idea can be disproven then new ones form to take it's place. There are many practices and beliefs that are no longer accepted today (human sacrifice, etc.) Moreover, if passages in the Bible can be disregarded (like stoning divorcees), then how is the Bible the absolute truth? Because if it was the absolute truth then, then it would be just as true today as it was in the past. Furthermore, religions have evolved out of previous religions (though the process is slow): for instance, Zoroastrianism into Christianity into Islam.
I'm agnostic and believe that it's extremely important to remain open to all realms of possibility--we humans don't currently know all there is to existence: we're discovering new things everyday. I do, however, believe in reason, which we need to utilize while analyzing different "possibilities" whenever we try to explain what we perceive as truth.
Living our lives with an intension of selfless love should ideally be our focus.
Whether there is a god, no god, or something in-between, I don't know. Science uses technology to prove or disprove theories of reality. I think it's perfectly reasonable to seek a god, pray, etc. because attempting to understand a spiritual reality is a personal endeavor and allowing yourself to delve into different practices and beliefs, while also maintaining a critical perspective, seems to be the only way one can attempt to prove and disprove to oneself what may or may not exist on a non-physical level. I plan on spending my life seeking answers to these questions; however, I don't have the expectation of ever discovering the truth in it's entirety--people have been searching for thousands of years and have created many religious and scientific theories in an attempt to explain what they have and continue to experience. How much closer have we gotten to the truth? How far have we gotten from one another?
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