My Journey to God

Chapter 1 A Framework for this Book (Page 3 to 5) Geologists say our Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Biologists say that humanity’s journey on Earth may have started 3.5 billion years ago, as indicated by the filament-like fossils in Australia, or perhaps 3.7 billion years ago, as may be evidenced by sediment rocks in Greenland. According to the most popular scriptures in the West, however, their God created humans, the world and everything in it a little over 6,000 years ago. The human population reached an estimated 8 billion in 2022, and that number continues to grow. Likewise, there are over 4,200 different religions (by some accounts) and that number is growing, too. According to data compiled by Infoplease, 83 percent of the world’s population belong to one of the 12 following religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, some form of Chinese Traditional Religion (Taoism, Shintoism, Confucianism), various forms of African Traditional Religion, Sikhism, Spiritism and Judaism. Fifteen percent, or 1.2 billion people, identify as atheist or non-religious. In another study, the Pew Research group found that in 2015, 35 percent of American millennials were not affiliated with any of the popular religions. Pew may have focused on the American population, but my own observations have revealed that 40 percent of the world’s population either doesn’t believe in a Creator God or Keeper God, or believes in some form of nature God. What are these statistics telling us? What is religion? Who created it and what does it really mean to be religious? Why were the major religions divided into several denominations? Why is one religion considered real and another fake? Is God watching us 24/7 and rewarding or punishing us based on each of our actions? What is the meaning of religious nationalism? Why do we need such nationalism? I have been seeking answers to all these questions for years, but it’s not just me. God’s existence and his/her influence over human behaviour has been of interest to all conscious minds. These questions are the framework for this book. During my own research, I have examined the logic and theosophies behind two major religious groups: the Indic and Abrahamic faiths. I have not read all the religious books I have talked about in this book page-to-page. Neither have I pretended to have any ability to read ancient Sanskrit, Urdu, or Hebrew texts. But I have read the translated versions of these holy books and the interpretations of them from my own trusted sources. My trusted sources for the Indic theosophy come mainly from Adi Shankara, Swami Vivekananda, Eknath Easwaran, Jay Lakhani, and Aurobindo Ghose. All of these humanists were prodigious readers and well-intended individuals. Three out of five of them were fluent in Sanskrit and English languages. The very few books, articles, and speeches they wrote are unbiased, in my opinion. Socrates, Bertrand Russell, Ibn Warraq (an ex-Muslim), Dan Barker (an ex-Christian), Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are my other trusted sources for their writings on Abrahamic theosophies. All of these individuals were or are well-read, well-meaning and culturally unbiased humanists. The religions I cover in this book are Hinduism, Judaism, Christianism, Islamism and Buddhism. I consider these the main religions and the rest as offshoots of these five. For instance, I take Hinduism as the root religion for Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism and many other lesser-known Eastern religions. Similarly, I consider Shintoism, Taoism and Confucianism to be part of Buddhism, and Christianity and Islam part of Judaism. From the latter three religions sprang many others (such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Bahai, Wahabi and so on). Even though Zoroastrianism is considered one of the oldest religions in the world, I found its belief system similar to that of both Hinduism and Islam (monotheistic, yet naturalist). Hinduism is a complex mix of philosophy, theology and spirituality. Not all of these ideas align with Jainism and Buddhism. Because of this, I have separated Jain and Buddhist faiths from Hinduism in this book. I have also separated Judaism and Islam from Christianity to highlight the two major differences between them. For instance, Judaism and Islam are more of the orthodoxy (or orthopraxy) faiths. The nonbelievers of such orthodoxy are automatically excluded from the groups, but Christianity gives the feeling of inclusiveness even when one doesn’t strictly follow the faith. This book is more of a research paper than a traditional book in the sense that this is a collection of information I found in the books, lectures, articles and videos I use as sources. The places I went and the people I met and spoke with have also contributed a great deal to this book. In this light, this book is a synthesized version of my journey to God.