Does God exist?

[Eastern Mind]

If I talk to you about a banana,

praṇām

Vannakkam: What kind of banana? Our Indian friends here might be surprised to know we mostly only have one variety available here. (Somtimes 2 in Canada, in the right store ... besides the standard one, we now can occasionally get a smaller yellow one ... much tastier, but twice the price!) Sad state when there are about 1200 varieties.

Nice analogy.

Aum Namasivaya

[yajvan]

hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

namast� EM

Vannakkam: What kind of banana?

[NayaSurya]

Ahhahhh A Cosmic Banana.

[Eastern Mind]

hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

namast� EM

Vannakkam: Where DO you get these pictures? I may be going bananas soon. (For the non-English speakers, its a saying meaning becoming a bit crazy.)

http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=h...1t:429,r:5,s:0

Aum Namasivaya

[devotee]

Namaste Rudy,

Hello I’ve been thinking over the last few days, does God exist? I know the bearded man on a cloud doesn’t, but what about Brahman? Sense at my current spiritual state I can’t experience Brahman how do I know It’s there? What about personal gods like Ganesha? What I’ve thought of is that people that have reached moksha know about them and tell us poor unenlightened fools about it. Why do you know or believe? Any Hindu arguments for God personal or impersonal or both?

[FONT='Calibri','sans-serif']Thanks for any replies. Feel free to redirect me to any other threads that explain this. [/font]
[FONT='Calibri','sans-serif']I hope He/It/She does exist [/FONT]

After a long time, there is someone on this forum who is thirsty for the Truth but is not ready to accept something which he doesn't find it logical ! That is a good sign. I passed through this phase long back. My advice is don’t believe anything unless you find it logically correct. I find that people are so much afraid of hell or God's anger that they barter their own logical thinking in the bargain. That is not good for aTruth- seeker. Think hard, reason ... draw logical conclusions and then believe in what is logical.

I advise the following steps for any seeker :

a) The first step :
Observe this world, yourself, others & ask questions ... deeply penetrating questions without fearing that God would be angry (be ready to sacrifice anything to know the Path to Truth … nothing comes for free. So, sacrifice all your fears here itself. Be ready to suffer any pains.)... etc. I may suggest you some questions :
i) Can a world like this spring out from unconscious things ? ==> This world is very well logically made. It is not possible to have such an arrangement without any very super intelligence working behind it. So, shall we assume that there is some very intelligent entity called God which is creating all this ?
Is it not possible that this whole world is itself intelligent ... is itself the material & efficient cause of itself ? Here there are only two logical conclusions arising out of this analysis. There is either something called God who is super intelligent & omnipotent who created this world all systems working within it OR the whole world itself is the Intelligent Creator of itself.

ii) Let's proceed with the first possibility that a God exists. If God exists then what should be the characteristics of such a God ? What are the assumptions before we accept that God exists ? The specification of God must fulfil these criteria, if God has to pass the test for being a true God :

1) He must be the origin and end of everything. If not, then that would mean that there was something which came into being on its own (or there exist some other agency which can destroy anything in God's created world) & that would need another God & that would be ridiculous regression. That further means that in the beginning there cannot be anything except God ... not even space (as everything has to be created from God as the material by God as the agent). So, God must create everything within Himself (as there exists nothing outside God) and by transforming Himself (as there is no other material to begin with, He alone exists).

2) God must be in complete control of this world .... as it is his design & result of his own intelligence & there is no intelligence apart from Himself. So, He must be omnipotent and omniscient.

3) Such a God who alone exists & anything which manifests in this world is His creation ... He can't be a jealous God as depicted in the Bible as He fully knows that there is no God except Himself. So, it would be ridiculous on His part to be jealous of something which He fully know that it doesn’t exist. Again, He must know the strengths & weaknesses of his design which He would must have made taking a conscious decision (because He is Super Intelligent). So, He is fully responsible for the strengths and also weaknesses of His own design. Therefore, He must be compassionate towards His own creations in spite of all their weaknesses. As He has not revealed Himself, he must be equally compassionate towards all beings whether they worship Him in one name/form or the other or even if they are atheist …. as any mistake committed by His own designed being is due to His own “faulty design”. Also, as He is super intelligent and omnipotent He must be able to predict what his own designed beings could do with the given logical design of their existence.

4) Why would God create such a world ? :
It is not logical to think that He created this world for people to worship Him or for praising Him or even for showing His opulence etc. Such an omnipotent who alone exists & when He alone is the material and efficient cause of everything which is there in this manifested world … must be free from such petty feelings. We can logically expect that He must be having the feelings of a Mother & also of a Father towards His own creation … as we have got all godly feelings from Him. Therefore, this creation must be some sport created due to His own peculiar Nature to create.

5) Can there exist a Satan?
Nothing can exist without His will as there is only One who is all knowing and Omnipotent. So, either no satan exists or if there is one It is because He wants satan to exist & Satan must be fully within His control. Therefore, He doesn't need our help to fight Satan as Christians & Muslims believe. We who don't know who we are … who don't know what the Truth is … who have very limited strength should not be in delusion that we can help God win a fantom war against some entity called Satan. If He cannot win a war against His own creation i.e. Satan then His being Omnipotent is challenged & it would also mean that a creation can be more powerful than creator which is ridiculous. Therefore, calls for all jehads or crusades is the foolishness of the first kind.

6) Can there exist an eternal fire of hell ?
As there is no fault which can be committed where God is not a party to it due to his own willed faulty design, there cannot be any permanent punishment like eternal fire of hell otherwise His sense of justice is challenged & He can't have any incentive to be unjust or partial or arbitrary. Also, there can be no punishment disproportionate to the gravity of mistake committed & therefore throwing Adams & Eve out of heaven and making all their progeny to suffer because of one innocent mistake of eating one apple from one's own Father's house can be only bogus & nothing else.

7) God cannot discriminate among His own creation as he has no incentive to do it.
Therefore, all superiority of race, creed, caste, skin colour and Nationality is bogus and false. As all must be equal in His eyes (because He has no incentive to be partial to anyone), all chances coming to one's life (getting good/bad parents, education, opportunities, health, spouse, children etc) must be due to the individual's own Karmas & cannot be random or arbitrary … as a system created by a Super Intelligent God must be fully logical and everything whatever happens in this must have a logical reason.

8) As the system must be logical & all are equally lovable to Him … He must have made rules to punish those who inflict pains on others and reward those who help others. Moreover, it is quite logical to assume that He must have created systems of discipline for this world alongwith this creation & He would not like to interfere with the system of judgement. So, even though He loves everyone, the rules must apply to all without any favour or bias towards any one.

9) He must be able to allow his children to worship Him/remember Him in whatever manner they feel is correct. He should come to His devotees (children who love Him) in he form or formlessness as the devotee wants. Therefore, all fights on whether God is of a certain form or God is formless must be bogus. For God there should be no difference between a form & formlessness ... It is actually He alone who is material cause & efficient cause of all forms and also formlessness.

That is enough for now as it would be a very lengthy discussion & there must be already questions on what I have proposed so far. So, I stop here & we may proceed further after we reach a certain degree of agreement.

The above is the model for the dualist .. where the world and the God are different. As we have logically drawn that there can be another possibility that God and World are really not different from each other i.e. the creator and the creation are not different. But that is very difficult to understand unless we understand this model which is simpler. So, we will take up Non-duality theory later.


OM

[Obelisk]

Namaste Rudy,

Like Eastern Mind said, I think it is necessary for one to experience God himself/herself before they can come to a conclusion, and develop their faith. I believe that we need a healthy balance of both logic and intuition to progress in our spiritual journey. Read some of a comparatively less-known but well written book titled "The Circle of Fire" by Dr. Palash Mazumdar, where he made a great parallel of Advaita with modern science and said how anybody could agree upto that point and still consider themselves an atheist; only on going further than that does it become a spiritual path.

Personally I believe in the Saguna/Nirguna Brahman concept in Advaita and am hoping for when I'll finally have my own unique experience with God. Also, I'd say that God doesn't "exist"; existence implies being bound by time, space, impermanence and the cycles of life and death. God is infinite and I believe that He IS the very essence of existence itself.

[Adhvagat]

Hello Rudy, first try to experience the basics. I've had experiences that made me sure that the path to God is great, so I don't believe that the path is fruitful, I know it is.

Realizing God is the last stage, so believing in him firmly is not the precondition to a spiritual life, it's its final goal!

Logic is not the only way to perceive life, as a matter of fact, the most important decisions are not made out of logic. You don't like good friends out of logic, you don't chose what food you most enjoy the taste out of logic, you don't love out of logic.

My example concerns a young woman patient who, in spite of efforts made on both sides, proved to be psychologically inaccessible. The Difficulty lay in the fact that she always knew better about everything. Her excellent education had provided her with a weapon ideally suited to this purpose, namely a highly polished Cartesian rationalism with an impeccably "geometrical" idea of reality. After several fruitless attempts to sweeten her rationalism with a somewhat more human understanding, I had to confine myself to the hope that something unexpected and irrational would turn up, something that burst the intellectual retort into which she had sealed herself. Well, I was sitting opposite of her one day, with my back to the window, listening to her flow of rhetoric. She had an impressive dream the night before, in which someone had given her a golden scarab-a costly piece of jewellery. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned round and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the window from outside in the obvious effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window and immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle, or common rose-chafer, whose gold-green color most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words "Here is your scarab." This broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results.

Don't kill your true self living only through logic!

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.

Quotes from: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Jung

[upsydownyupsy mv ss]

Hello I’ve been thinking over the last few days, does God exist? I know the bearded man on a cloud doesn’t, but what about Brahman? Sense at my current spiritual state I can’t experience Brahman how do I know It’s there? What about personal gods like Ganesha? What I’ve thought of is that people that have reached moksha know about them and tell us poor unenlightened fools about it. Why do you know or believe? Any Hindu arguments for God personal or impersonal or both?
[FONT='Calibri','sans-serif']Thanks for any replies. Feel free to redirect me to any other threads that explain this. [/font]
[FONT='Calibri','sans-serif']I hope He/It/She does exist[/font]

Yur going the right way by questioning god's existence!
I dislike those believers who blindly believe in god, we must believe, but not blindly. Hmm... why don't you try experimenting to see whether god exists or not on you're own? and try observing your surroundings.... Search every place you can, believe me, you can find god in the most unexpected places. But, first of all, make sure that you know your 'personal definition' of the word, 'god'. Unless, you get that sorted out, you can't find him. According to Shankaracharya, god is the 'truth' or 'actual reality'. Some describe god as 'infinite knowledge', others call god as the 'one untouched by lies, injustice and ignorance.' From these definitions, I know god exists. I'd also like to add that he/she/it is the most awesomest companion to be with!! The fun part is, the more you are curious about him and the more you doubt him, then you will know about him more and more and love him more and more. The best part is, you can share any feeling with him, he doesn't mind taking poison nor does he mind stealing butter. God is the best person to whon you can open your heart and share your feelings, you can even scold him, till you get tired, when you're finished, he'll tell you what actually went wrong. God does exist with respect to me. I found god through questions. My mooto to find god, 'QUESTION EACH AND EVERY DAMN THING, REAL OR UNREAL YOU COME ACROSS AND NEVER GET TIRED OF QUESTIONING AND NEVER GET TIRED OF SEARCHING ANSWERS.

[PARAM]

Hello I�ve been thinking over the last few days, does God exist? I know the bearded man on a cloud doesn�t, but what about Brahman? Sense at my current spiritual state I can�t experience Brahman how do I know It�s there? What about personal gods like Ganesha? What I�ve thought of is that people that have reached moksha know about them and tell us poor unenlightened fools about it. Why do you know or believe? Any Hindu arguments for God personal or impersonal or both?
Thanks for any replies. Feel free to redirect me to any other threads that explain this.
I hope He/It/She does exist

If you are talking about personal like Ganesha, then they too exist, Don't you remember milk miracle by Ganesha, and Third Eye Miracle in Shivlingas ?

Vishnu's help to Ramanujacharya, Krishna's help to Dhanna Jat, Rahim etc ?

They do exist.

However the events are very old
As about Shiva Vishnu Brahma
their time given in various text must be the time between Kalp, and there stories are Maya

Sri Krishna in Geeta also tells that they all exist but they are Maya, in fact Om himself create it to educate Atmas what to do and what to not, why to do and why not, how to do and how not.

[sunyata07]

Namaste Rudy,

The others have already expressed much of my own thoughts eloquently, so what I add may sound redundant. Doubt is not a bad thing. In fact, it is often the precursor to true spiritual and self-inquiry. To question why is wonderful. It is not a cause for sorrow or uncertainty! I myself have never been explicitly atheist, but like many others I have had moments of doubt and confusion. Just over a year ago I went through a questioning phase like yourself. I also "hoped God was real", and would lie awake at night wondering if He was all just a dream or fantasy we had made to make ourselves feel better, to know there was something greater. Were it not for this, I ardently believe I would have never progressed much further. It is all part and parcel of one's spiritual journey, IMO. To quote another member's comment once, "No doubt will lead to no enlightment, but much doubt can lead to great enlightenment!"

To say I and the others believe strongly in God would be clearly meaningless for you. What does it mean, and how can you take our word for it? How, indeed. God is to be experienced personally. There is no other way for you to know Him. Pietro makes an apt observation: you cannot know God through mere logic, just as you cannot know love through logic. Love, if anything, is the antithesis of logic! How else can we explain self-sacrifice, effort to work for others, compassion for another living creature, forgiveness for the transgressions of others? You don't question the existence of love and goodness, surely, even though you cannot prove these. They are not physical, you cannot see or measure love, but you see it is the cause and the good things that arise from it are the effects. The same analogy can be made of God, of Whom love as we understand is just a tiny component of His many faces.

As upsydownyupsy mv ss says, question as much as you need to! Learn to think for yourself and meditate on this and don't feel unhappy for not knowing. You can come to your own conclusions. God will not be angry or even annoyed at your questioning Him. Millions do everyday! Many outright reject His existence, but still He smiles on them and tenderly watches over all. He placed the decision to believe squarely into your own hands. This is His gift of free-will to everyone.

That we can and cannot see Him, can and cannot prove or disprove Him... this is all part of God's lila, His sport for His own divine amusement and joy. He is beyond the reach of everything else except Love of and for Him. Nothing else can make you know Him directly.

Om namah Shivaya