Thread: What is the reason of your existence?

Islam doesn't allow terrorism, but it does promote female genital mutilation so that she doesn't feel pleasure during intercourse, although circumcision is certainly no better either; so don't feel I'm just picking on Islam here. You describe God as a perfect being that we can't comprehend. You say that in order to do the right thing, essentially, you need to accept God as your only God, love him, and heed his word. But, if God gave us the ability to feel emotions and have the free will to make our own decisions, why would he need to tell us to do something like mutilate our genitals to reduce sexual pleasure? I can see some practical reasons for it given the time period it started showing up, but that's not really answering my question. Why would God need to tell us to do anything or not do anything at all? Why can't he simply work from the background, behind the scenes, in strange and mysterious ways... as he's often described as doing? Why does he have to work behind the scenes at all? We can't comprehend his actions, so there could be a very valid reason for not interfering whatsoever (in fact it goes against the principal of giving us free will in the first place). The only reason he would interfere is to prove his existence to his children, and if it's obvious that he was needed for this all to exist, then why would he need to interfere at all?

We can come up with all kinds of reasons why God would want to do something or not do something at all, but our points would never be valid because they have the bias of human perspective. However, an omniscient and omnipotent God would be so far and away different from what we comprehend, that his existence doesn't require explicit rules on us to be set. It would make a lot more sense to say that the only rules needed in the first place would be the laws of physics, considering we observe them and can confirm their existence. Setting the initial conditions and creating the stage whereupon these conditions unfold would be enough for things to settle themselves out. Why does God favor humans over his other creations... namely, everything? Why would he care for us more than cosmic dust, a sun, asteroids, water, or literally anything else? Would it's existence in itself not have enough inherent beauty and significance in the first place? There is no need for us to cut our reproductive organs or to have single sexual partners, not to lie, or anything else. The fact we have them at all would be amazing itself. The rest would be on us to sort out, which it seems we have been doing. Humans like to manipulate one another, and making claims like God told them that we need to do this or that is a terrifyingly easy excuse to have for so many people to believe it. If only one religion is right, then why would so many people claim the same thing? Is God's original message just getting lost in translation because human will? That does not necessitate his fallibility, but it doesn't exclude it. More likely, the God anyone claims to believe originally started as an exploit to control other people, or somebody was generally confused or believed in what they thought, and someone along the line wound up exploiting it and controlling people.

It wouldn't be outside God's abilities to communicate with human beings, but if such an imperfect being communicates with him, they will always misunderstand what he says. If not the original person, than all the people that listen to them. It's not possible for there to be an objective view on anything as a human being, so no one can know what God truly wants us to do. You said it yourself, we can't comprehend God, his motives, or actions. It doesn't mean then that he is not omnipotent, but that his omnipotence would interfere with what we say he gifted us with. Either we have free will, and God chooses not to dictate our actions or interfere with them, or we have no free will at all. There isn't a scenario that allows for this to happen. Well, actually there is, that God wants all that happens to happen, which is virtually the same as not doing anything at all, but could possibly have a different motivation behind it. God could want to do something but be stopping himself in order to allow us free will, or he never wanted us to have free will in the first place. And, if the latter is true, there could be plenty of reasons behind it. Either that he doesn't care, that it doesn't matter, that it matters... period (that it's meaning is for it to happen), that it matters for reasons beyond its mere existence, etc.

Now, if God made the entire universe, how can he interfere with it? If he is outside it (which he must be in order to create it in the first place), how can he influence it from the outside? If he enters it, he would be subject to his own laws. In order to exist at all in the first place, we have to note the natural laws we would observe. He would be subject to those laws upon entering the universe, which means he gains a perspective. Perceptual perspective only exists by excluding all understanding and knowledge of something. In order to know left, from right, from up, from down, and from past to future is to exist from a single (or virtually single) spot, and to observe all things in comparison to this spot as a preferred reference frame. That negates omnipotence when acting from within the universe. Which makes sense according to what we observe, at the very least. God made laws that the universe abides by, although they appear to change under certain extreme conditions that we don't understand very well and could only change in appearance due to negation or impossibility of some of the laws to exist the more extreme a system gets. In other words, the other laws arise out of complexity arising from simplicity. Kind of like the difference between cells human beings, a conglomerate of those cells working in tandem to produce awareness and agency. The complexity manifests from the simplicity naturally. Anyway, I digress.

If God is outside our universe, he can't interfere with it, because to us he does not exist. If God is inside the universe (or the whole universe), he is separated into as many fragments as there are particles. This and the laws he put in place would completely hinder his omnipotence. He would still be capable of great power (potentially), but he can't defy the rules he set up in the first place. So, why tell us to do all these things that interferes with our free will? Why tell us anything at all? Why is not his existence as the medium through which anything is allowed to exist at all not good enough for us? Why should it be bad or good at all? It is only from a human perspective. However, his great and vast universe would allow for other forms of life, why value ours over their's? Is intelligence a factor in deciding something's worth? If the sun didn't exist, the moon didn't exist, the earth didn't exist, it none of what existed existed in the first place, we could not exist (lol, obviously). Why are they not equally valuable? What is so special about us that the things that made us, and allowed for our existence (and continued existence) not just as special as us, but in different ways and for different reasons? Why do just humans get souls and afterlives but not animals? Don't planets get to exist all over again, even if they were never alive to begin with? Well, nothing says that has to be the case, but that's outside the realm of what we can falsify and test, kind of like God. We can't prove or disprove that it happens or does not. However, I just don't see why God would need to impose rules on us besides the ones that created the universe in the first place when we can make our own, because really it doesn't matter to anything else? It's just better that we impose rules on ourselves for us, which we should do because we cherish the time we are given to spend with each other. God doesn't need to tell us what to do, and from what we observe, it's much more probable and likely that he in fact he has not and does not. The only proof we have comes from people with too much to gain from it, where as God simply never told us what to do in the first place. He gave us the choice to do what we want, even according to you. We made all that other stuff up, and have done all these evil and good things we have ever done to each other throughout history to each other; which, I might add, is both humbling, awesome, and terrifying, grotesque, beautiful, happy, sad, and everything in between... We can choose how we feel about it (assuming we have free will at all of course ).

This idea, and this idea alone is enough for me to be good to my fellow human beings, to forgive and forget, for there to be times where I break my own rules and everybody else's, times where I follow them, and for things to still have meaning and be great all on its own. Whether or not God exists is still a mystery to me, which is why I don't really say he does or does not, simply that I don't know. However, the other stuff people posit about God is all made up to me, and I find it an interesting way to examine humankind's own psychological evolution over the course of time, which in itself is a beautiful thing. Things don't lose meaning because God does or does not exist, or whether he cares about us or not. The meaning we come up with means what it means, it just is. We can't always control what we believe either, and that's okay.