Okay, in this post, I will try to make it as succinct as possible; hence, I’ll make it to point per point.
On Faith
Traditional views on faith hold that faith is equal to believing that lacks of empirical evidence, in contrast with science*. Although not necessarily bad, this has been a subject of ridicule by some freethinkers. There goes the redefinition of faith; we can go with:
a) Faith as a way of living that regards life as having some meaning on it. In this way, faith serves as a notion that against the deconstruction of human and their life experiences as mere particles that occupy space and time, interact with other particles, and are subjected to probability. Faith says that life is beyond that; that what we do in this world is special and has meaning. To have faith is to see the world differently with wonder, enchantment, and sense of mystery and divinity. To have faith is to hold God to provide answers to human existence, although God’s existence is rationally uncertain.
b) Faith as an ecstatic passion for the ultimate. Faith includes rational and non-rational elements, yet is not identical with them. It means that when one encounters something ultimate that demands total surrender (after certain justifications that eventually stop in certain level) to whoever accepts its ultimacy, she is ready to have other concerns, other worldviews, be sacrificed.
On God
In my view, God has two properties, Transcendence and Immanence. God as Transcendental Being is a God who serves as foundation/ground upon which all beings exist. This God precedes subject-object dichotomy and ontologically prior to conception (similar to Heidegger’s Da-Sein) and reason. Using this a priori definition, Transcendental God is described by modern philosophy as “beyond reason/knowledge,” since knowing God presupposes the subject-object dichotomy. This is a God whom described by Paul Tillich as “God above God.” However, since Transcendental God is beyond comprehension, this somehow deconstructs God into non-personal Being, contrasts with traditional religious views.
God as Immanent Being is a God who manifested into subject-object dichotomy realm, as personal/anthropomorphical Being. This is a God as described by traditional religious views (and also the one who is killed by Nietzsche.) In my definition, Immanent God is a maximum entity possessing the highest possible features in all possible qualities which are not logically inconsistent. However this leads to several questions: whether God has control upon Its qualities (can God choose to be evil – since God is always described as all-loving. If It can’t, then God is not sovereign-omnipotent. Termed aseity-sovereignty paradox,) and whether omniscience is compatible with free-will (more on that later.)
The dualism of Transcendence-Immanence of God has led to a paradox, since logically it is impossible to have both qualities. My conjecture to T-I paradox is simple: that it is possible to have both qualities. In Christianity and Islam**, God is both described as Transcendent (Alpha and Omega; The Beginning and the Ending; Which Is, which Was, and which Is to Come. – Revelation 1:8. The First and the Last; The Outward and the Inward; The Knower of Everything - Al Hadid:3) and Immanent Being (there are myriad of mentions in Bible and Quran.) How this is possible? We can take a look on how electron behaves.
It is proven mathematically and empirically that electron has dualism in its nature: it is both a wave and a particle (it can even occupy two positions at the same time.) When we’re about to observe it, it experiences a wave function collapse; it decoheres as either wave or particle. Using this, we’re able to logically conceive that God can have dualism, too. Its default position is Its Transcendence; however, due to Its loving nature to express love to Its creations, It has necessity to decohere as an Immanent God. Immanent God does not just serve as a symbol (as described by Paul Tillich) but It is truly alive and manifested through religious experiences.
On Free Will
Are we driven by free will or a deterministic system? It is both, of course. Free will is when we make a decision; determinism is when we fall down to the earth because of the gravity, or that human can’t grow a pair of fully functional wings because there is no DNA for wings in human genes (this serves as an answer to Sartre’s problem.) However, a God who allows human being to have free will pose some problems.
First, the problem of evil. As been explained by Alvin Plantinga, problem of evil arises as the consequence of God giving human free will. To be fully capable of making free moral judgement, human must be able to do both morally good things and morally bad things, open up the possibility of doing crime. Inasmuch of this doesn’t really answer of problem of natural evil (such as why an omnibenevolent God lets disasters/starvations happen) and problem of non-interference (such as why an all-loving God didn’t prevent Holocaust to take much death tolls despite I believe there were prayers from millions of Jews at that time,) this begs the question as why the configuration of the world that allows suffering/evil to happen and the possibility of innocent victims is preferable by God rather than not giving free will at all***. Or, let’s say why didn’t God create the world where bullets and knives will not cause any harm to human, therefore keeping the world free from suffering but still allowing free will to happen? Some will say that God is also just, therefore will punish those who inflicted evil things to others (in hell?); Nonetheless, hell is also problematic, but more on that later.
In regards of problem of natural evil, if God deliberately "sacrifices" humans through disasters/famine for the sake of so that other people will learn, then God must be horribly unjust, even if God promises places in heaven for these people. I am not entitled to shoot my first kid just to serve as a warning for my other kids, even though I always provide her with all her needs before. Humans are not the means, they are the ends in themselves. Using them to serve as an example for the others therefore is immoral and incompatible with the concept of an omnibenevolent God. Even if you say that "God is so good with us, why do you never take into account of Its goodness?" it is still wrong. Morality is not a simple economic calculus. That's why even the most religious person would think that we cannot exempt a person from criminal charges simply because she never breaks the law before or always donates for charities and poor people. This is why it is simply wrong to dismiss problem of evil just because God is (seemingly) good (in your perspective.)
Second, the problem of omniscience. Suppose there is a God G who understands all facts in the universe, say K1 = {F1, F2, F3,…} and all possible combination of subsets of facts, say K2 = {(F1 + F2), (F1 + F3), (F2 + F3),…} and so forth; then G who understands knowledge K = {K1, K2, K3,…} including of what will happen in the future Kt+n = {K1t+n, K2t+n, K3t+n,…} will know all what’s happening in all quantum states in all 10^500 multiverses and all subsequent outcomes. Therefore, if God knows all possible outcomes from our actions, then the free will that we have is not a free will, but just an illusion of it. Either God must be not omniscience, or It limits Itself from knowing all thing, despite possible to know. Nevertheless, it is well-established by religions that God knows everything including the future, that’s one of my problems of faith.
On Hell
Suppose a just God will banish those who committed wrongdoings in Hell, eternally. This is, however, in itself, is unjust and incompatible with an omnibenevolent God. Why?
1. It is unjust to punish someone eternally for what she did in a limited/temporary course of time. How can it be just to punish someone who spent, let’s say a total of 10 years from all her life since she was kid for doing sinful things, into a million millions millions millions (ad infinitum) years of torture?
2. Suppose I’m a robot maker, and I programmed my robot to be able to make choices for navigating around obstacles and doing certain things. Assume I didn’t include Asimov’s laws of robotic in my robot’s algorithm (therefore my robot is capable of killing human, even though I didn’t specifically program it to do so.) My robot then has free will, albeit rudimentary. Suppose then my robot inadvertently killed human, who is held liable for the murder? Me as the maker, or the robot as the doer, or both?
I, although can’t foresee the outcome of the action of my robot, can be held liable, as the tort law also can also hold companies that design dangerous equipment/machine culpable if that machine’s actions can cause loss of life, limb, and/or property. The court can decide whether I have taken all reasonable precautions to prevent death, injury, and damage (I haven’t – for the sake of allowing “free will.”) If the court can prove that I can foresee the action of my faulty robot, the punishment will even be more severe. Now, replace me with God and robot with human. Isn’t God supposedly held liable for the actions of human, moreover when actually It can foresee the impact and damage of the actions of human and can prevent it to happen?
Furthermore, the existence of hell itself is problematic. I’m not talking about its visual descriptions, since different people can also portray the same object with different descriptions. I’m talking about the prerequisite to enter hell.
Assume hell is a university, say University X. And we know there are various ways to enter it: via written test (SNMPTN,) selection of rapport or talent (PMDK,) or by, well, money (swadana.) We can safely say that we can enter University X by one of that means. But what if there is a campus authority says the only valid way to enter University X is by SNMPTN, and there is another campus authority that says the only valid way to enter University X is by PMDK, and another campus authority says swadana and only swadana? Should University X be an objective thing, it has to have a non-contradictory and non-exclusionary way to accept students. This is exactly another problem of hell: religions are contradictory and exclusionary in determining who gets to hell.
Virtually almost every major religion dictates that the one who doesn’t believe in that particular religion’s teaching will go to hell. Religion A dictates that the nonbelievers of religion A (including believers of religion B, C, D, E, atheists, etc.,) will go to hell. Religion B dictates that the nonbelievers of religion B (including believers of religion A, C, D, E, atheists, etc.,) will go to hell. Therefore, either there are a lot of hells (in which everyone goes to hells – see the reasoning above,) or there is only one hell but we don’t know whose version of hell that is true (giving us a non-zero probability of choosing the wrong religion.)
Well, perhaps, hell is just a metaphor for the bad consequences of our wrongdoings in this world, and heaven is the good ones. Hell for a murderer is having his ass thrown in jail for years and beaten by his cellmates. Hell for a cheater is having his marriage and family gone astray. Hell for a corruptor is having a trouble sleeping at night, and then if he gets caught he has to endure shame and humiliation in media and in jail, and so forth. This is similar to the concept of karma or "what you sow is what you reap." But this is just my opinion, of course.
Epilogue
With all the problems of mainstream religions, I’ve been asked by my friend of what will I have my kids to embrace? Well, whenever my kids are logically capable, I will have them taught all that I know about atheism, Christianity, agnosticism, Islam, pandeism, Buddhism, pantheism, Hinduism, deism, etc. and all the pluses and minuses of all of them. I will not indoctrinate them that there is God, but I won't indoctrinate them that there is no God, either. I will teach them to be skeptical. For what purpose? So that they will have an informed choice and pick the best for themselves – in a thoughtful, intellectual way, of course.
Post Scriptum
* However, science also has limits in achieving empirical evidences. For instance, we will never know what lies beyond 46 billion light years (4 x 10^23 kilometers) from us. We will never have the empirical evidences for string theory – as to test it we need a collider in the size of a galaxy. Making science is somehow intuitive as well.
** I just know a similar concept of a Transcendent God in Hinduism, that is Nirguna Brahman. As of my limited understanding about other religions, I’d like to hear to what other religions have to say about the concept of Transcendental God.
*** Have been discussed by Fyodor Dostoevsky in his novel “The Brothers Karamazov,” especially in “The Grand Inquisitor” part. Also discussed by C. S. Lewis in “The Problem of Pain” and Alvin Plantinga in “God, Freedom, and Evil.”
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