Believing in God

It has always been strikingly amazing to me how weak humans are, and yet they are leaders of that planet. We're physically very fragile, much weaker than many other creatures and can be overpowered to our death by microscopic creatures that we can't even see . Our senses are so deficient. There are frequencies we can't hear, light waves that we can't see, pressure that we can't feel. We are too tiny and yet we can't fully understand how our bodies that we live in everyday manages to run itself with breath-taking accuracy and coordination without us commanding it, let alone the limits of the universe we have been living in for millions of years.We only out do other creatures in the superiority of our brains. Creative, intelligent superior brains as they are, but still, like our senses and bodies have their narrow range compared to those of other creatures, our intelligence too must be limited. There must be things we can't possibly know, things we can't possibly understand their logic no matter how hard we try.

I don't think that you can induce an unbeliever to believe in God by a logical argument because I don't think that logic is where belief originates. It is not the brain where belief is initiated, it is the spirit. Anything that is proved only by logic without any materialistic evidence to support it can be counter argued by another logic. Logic and common sense are not the same to everybody and they vary according to how you've been brought up, your education, the way your brain reasons things, and most of all, according to what you are inclined to believe as common sense. I think that believing in God depends entirely on something inside each believer that says there is a God that we ought to be worshiping regardless of any logical conviction that points to the existence of a Creator. You know it in your heart, in your spirit. You seek Him. You're certain that He is here although you've never seen Him. Where does that feeling come from? As a Muslim I believe that in some time before our existence on Earth God has made us all testify that He is our Creator so that we are born with that innate quest of Him and a vague knowledge that He exists until that feeling is ascertained when we are taught about religion.

"إِذْ أَخَذَ رَبُّكَ مِن بَنِي آدَمَ مِن ظُهُورِهِمْ ذُرِّيَّتَهُمْ وَأَشْهَدَهُمْ عَلَى أَنفُسِهِمْ أَلَسْتَ بِرَبِّكُمْ قَالُواْ بَلَى شَهِدْنَا أَن تَقُولُواْ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ إِنَّا كُنَّا عَنْ هَذَا غَافِلِينَ." الأعراف 172

To an atheist, that story doesn't make sense and I can't logically argue him into believing in it, because to believe in such a story you have to first believe that there is a God. An atheist would say that it's human weakness and precariousness that created religion to face the feared unknown future and the daily sufferings of life. Fragile and of limited powers of sense as we are, the knowledge of the existence of God who watches over us, sees and hears everything, knows the future and knows what's best for you and would guide you through it is exactly what we need to be able to face life, and that's , atheists say, is how religion started.

Unless an atheist can give that feeling the same interpretation that a believer gives, I don't think there can be any logical argument that would induce him to believe. The spiritual world of religion would seem so shocking to his logic that accepts only scientifically proved facts and rules that he has experienced on Earth. It's only God who can take over a heart, and get it to look at things the way a believer does.

"إِنَّكَ لا تَهْدِي مَنْ أَحْبَبْتَ وَلَكِنَّ اللَّهَ يَهْدِي مَن يَشَاء وَهُوَ أَعْلَمُ بِالْمُهْتَدِينَ" الزخرف 56

In my logic, I see that if the Earthly physical rules change and cease to apply by leaving this planet just to the outer space where a new set of rules would apply. If within our universe can exist two different worlds each with its own set of rules, then why can't another world as well exist too? If a human being floating in air is an absurd illogical idea on Earth but then humanity finds out that humans can float in space and then the idea wouldn't be absurd, Then who defines absurdity and logic? If logic changes based on what we know and if our ability to know is clearly deficient, then who decides?

I see that without God, there would be no right or wrong. Who says that stealing is wrong if you can get away with it without getting caught? If I don't go to jail if I lie and there is no God to judge me, then why wouldn't I? Who sets the moral rules? If there is no God to set these rules, no God to fear, why would I follow them? The fact that there is God is the only thing that makes the distinction between goodness and evil, and without Him it can never be, and it just wouldn't make sense. 

That's the way I see religion. A spiritual belief first and before anything else, that broadens your logic into accepting logics of other worlds. Worlds accepted for the goodness, the peace, the harmony they bring and after all, for their sensible logic.

Just a thought...

Continued: Believing in God, The Aftermath

At the Movies

TV is usually something as a student you would want to avoid. You sometimes go thinking "I'm not going to waste so much time watching TV, I'm only taking a couple of minutes to look at the TV guide and see what's on anyway." And of course you go crazy over something in the guide and end up watching TV instead of studying. Hardly does watching TV end up with you digging through your second year books, and in search for what? Your Medical Biochemistry book!

It was that movie "Extraordinary measures" which was all about a line we've read in the Carbohydrates Metabolism chapter without much attention. Pompe's Disease. (To refresh our memories here, that's a glycogen storage disorder. A genetic defect in the glycogen metabolism, an absent alpha 1,4 Glucosidase enzyme that is needed to degrade glycogen into glucose. The result is accumulation of the excess glycogen in different body organs leading to organomegaly, in addition to accumulation in the cardiac and respiratory muscles leading to cardiorespiratory failure and thus death). Based on the true story of a father who had two children with the fatal disease that had no treatment. But did he give up? He found the scientist whose research on synthesizing the enzyme are most advanced and together they raised money to found a biotechnology company, found investors to fund the project and went through all the drama till the drug came to life! The treatment worked, he saved his children's life and brought to existence a treatment to a fatal disease that had no available treatment before.

A true story, I said.

I tried to talk about scientific research. About preparing students with open minded creative mentalities who wouldn't take "There is no available treatment" for an answer. About waking up to see Medicine as a science, a  very soft mold that the world is still shaping and not just a school subject that you study to pass ill prepared exams that can't evaluate you. About funding. About research facilities. I was about to talk about all that when I thought how infinitely ridiculous it would be. Despite studying at the university hospital everyday (the supposed to be mother-ship of scientific research) and staring reality in the face, we dream away. We start criticizing the 50th floor of the tower while the 49 floors below it don't exist in the first place! Reality says that we can't afford providing the already available treatments for the patients who need them before we would consider funding for creating ones that don't exist. That our teachers can't teach us what's already well known to science so that they would be able to teach us creative thinking. The fact that patients learn how to turn their disease into a profession through which they make money. How stupid it is to even begin to think of research while you have a hospital with cats and cockroaches freely rooming all around the wards and the patients' beds.What facilities can you dream of finding in a place which has no facilities for placing the students during 9 am tutorials except in the wards with the patients who find it inevitable to leave the ward (if their condition allows it) until the students leave.

It's even more ridiculous to talk about all of that frustration. What's the point? Fixing the decaying distorted ghost of a health care system we have would require fixing the economic, social and political system of the country. A decent health care system can only be the final outcome of a decent community planning system on every possible aspect. And the fact that it is pointless to discuss it before the previously mentioned reforms take place only adds up to the unbelievable frustration.

The only thing left for you to do in the middle of that pointlessness is to figure out which place out of the very limited options of places do you want to stand. The pointlessness and frustration don't seem to strike everybody that hard anyway. There are those walking around completely satisfied thinking they are unbelievably important people for getting to be part of the leadership of that ghost of a system. As long as they're able to swim on the surface of the swamp then who the hell cares about its bottom? And there are those  who are trying to build the 50th floor in the air although they know it all falls at the end but contented with the good however limited they do through their attempts. There are those working on finding an exit for themselves and those working on finding an exit for everybody else except themselves. There are those at the bottom of the swamp like the helpless patients or the care givers who have completely given up on everything and surrendered. And then there are those who have decided to go through the fight for building the base, for reforming the head of this country's system so that the builders of the 50th floor won't fall as they always eventually do. All you have to do is just decide.