What Does Belief In God Mean?
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peace,
I want to see the views of those on this board on this topic, I found FearfulofAllah's views interesting-
In describing the two categories of people, I have taken the liberty of defining ?belief in god? as ?the conscious act of doing good, out of unselfish motives, even if it is at a personal cost?. One may be publicly an atheist and reject completely the notion of any supernatural power but if that person consciously does good acts as a matter of principle in life, then for the sake of this discussion, that person will be considered as having ?belief in god?. By this definition, the opposite is also true that a person, who normally does only bad things, lacks ?belief in god?, even if that person claims to believe in god.
In my opinion, this way of defining ?belief in god? is valid because no one, to this date, has come up with a completely accurate description of what god really is, and given that proponents of god invariably describe god in positive terms, that ?belief in god? should be equated with ?belief in good?. In any case, this view of god makes a lot more sense than the stereotypical image of an old man sitting on his throne in the sky controlling the weather.
Our current understanding, of what god is, is just an artificial construction that we have made up in our minds so that we can picture the unseen. Different people have different constructs in their minds about what god is. Some of these constructs are in contradiction to other constructs. A lot of people accept their own construct as being accurate but reject other people?s constructs. Similarly, some people reject everyone?s constructs and refuse to believe in anything that has no sound basis or logical justification. They make up their own version of what reality is and follow that philosophy. What they have chosen to do is reject everyone else?s definition of ?god?, and make up their own definition of ?god?, and follow that instead. They may or may not choose to use the word ?god? to describe what they have constructed in their minds. So when someone denies the existence of god, they are in effect denying what, in their view, other people have conjured up and are calling god. This is all valid behavior and in accordance with the Quranic instruction to not uphold anything for which one has no supporting information.
And do not uphold what you have no knowledge of. For the hearing, eyesight, and mind, all these you are responsible for.
There are two types of gods that people can chose to believe in, true gods and false gods. True gods are those that reflect all that is good around us love, life, good, happiness, knowledge, kindness, etc. False gods are those that reflect all that is bad around us hatred, enmity, greed, jealousy, arrogance, ignorance, etc. For the sake of this essay, I will define anyone who believes in the false gods to lack ?belief in god?.
I have also used the term ?natural law? to loosely mean the way things work in the universe and the forces that keep order within the chaos. This can be the force of gravitation, the scientific and mathematical principles, light, human ideologies that promote peace and welfare, biological, geological, ecological and cosmological functions that sustain life, and many other things.
There are two main categories into which all people can be classified. There might exist other subcategories within these two categories, but to my knowledge nobody can be excluded from the two main categories.