Sober Philosophy: Existence or non-existence of God (Noha presents)

When thinking about what to write in this introduction, i instantly regretted not specifying the topic more! “The existence of god or not or something in between!” is a very wide topic! It's the present research mission of my life! Here are questions that come to mind: Ontological, empirical, existential: 1. I think the first thing that has to be defined (just for the sake of directing the discussion) is what do we mean by god? Are there specific standards that have to exist in order to say that we are talking about “god”? For example, is god an entity, separate / connected, a conscious being, a process, a universal truth or a relative thing/being based on individual and/or space and time, controlling or limited… 2. Can we actually find an answer whether god exists or not? Is it through personal experience and what others say, through social trends, through science, through historical patterns? Or is it impossible to know? 3. I remember reflecting with my sister Lina, if we are all going to die, and all humanity and life will cease to exist, and the earth and sun and stars and galaxies will one day die, and the universe will expand into an ultimate heat-death, why should i choose to continue to live? Why should i do anything good? Why should i condition myself from doing acts that may hurt others? Do we need to believe in god to ground us in the face of this tragic existential reality? 4. Do we need the idea of god to answer existential questions? Like how did we exist, how is the evolution of the universe so intricate and beautiful, what is the purpose of our existence, what is the purpose of the evolution of cosmic/natural/human history, what is the end and/or after the end… My sister Lina also shared with me once a beautiful example: If we suddenly exist to find ourselves in a flying plane… don't we need to know who is driving/controlling the plane, why are we in this plane, and where is it going? Do we need the idea of god to answer these questions? 5. Especially the question of existence… i remember when i was in the beginnings of questioning religion after the Egyptian revolution, i was sitting in a cafe in central Cairo with friends, including a father of a revolutionary martyr, and i asked him, if we say that the existence of the universe is not possible without a god, then we should say that the existence of god is not possible without the existence of another god, and so on, then how can we explain god. And he answered me: if we go on saying existence came from a god, then this god came from another god, and that god came from another god, and so on for eternity, then what if god is eternity itself! How can we deal with the question: where did existence come from? Psychological: 6. What are the psychological (and material, and social) conditions that drive the individual to believe in a god or not or something in between? 7. Is god an innate idea that develops in the individual? Or does it need a community to be developed? 8. Does the individual psychologically need to believe in a god? Or does it harm the individual? Or is it something not important for the individual's life? And does the benefit or harm or no need for belief in a god proves or disproves their existence? Related to this also is personal “suffering” and the endurance of it… 9. How is death and the end of existence psychologically related to the belief or non-belief in god? Historical and social: 10. What are the material and socio-historical conditions that affect a society's understanding of what god/truth is and how does it affect it? 11. What is the historical evolution of the idea “of god, or like Morgan Freeman calls it, The story of god” in his National Geographic show? Are there different paths of the historical evolution of the existence or non-existence of the idea of god in different civilizations or regions of the world? What caused these different paths? Also, are the trends of globalizing civilizational/cultural conditions may…