“When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized God doesn’t work that way. So I stole one and prayed for forgiveness.” — Emo Philips
Preface
Why must a common definition of God be agreed upon?
God in the Philosophy of Religion
God in the Quran
The word “Khoda” (God) in Persian and its significance
God in everyday speech
God after Atheism
Preface
Defining the word “God” is highly problematic because every believer—and even every atheist—holds a different conception of God and allows themselves to define God as they perceive Him. It can be said that there are as many Gods as there are human beings on Earth, and these various gods possess the specific traits that their respective worshippers revere.
Usually, people’s God resembles the people themselves, as if every person’s God is their own conception of the most perfect being. The goal of this piece, in its first two sections, is to define the word “God” in a meaningful and debatable way so that the reader can gain a better understanding of the philosophical writings regarding the question of God’s existence. At the end of this text, you will find several sections on related and important points, such as the word “God” in the Persian language and suggestions for alternative words to achieve clearer speech.
Why Must a Common Definition of God Be Agreed Upon?
It is only rational that before debating the existence or non-existence of something, one must first discuss what that thing is. If two people are to exchange meaningful arguments about the existence of God, they must both, at the very least, reach a consensus on what God actually is. Otherwise, their conversation will either be a sequence of meaningless sounds or will require interpreters and multiple lectures to decipher—and human beings communicate through meaningful discourse. In other words, the question “What is God?” precedes the question “Does God exist?” Furthermore, “What is God?” is a question that can be asked about any statement in which the word “God” is used.
Beyond this, for a human being to seriously investigate and think about God, they must know what they are investigating. Is it possible for someone who cannot define a horse to research horses? For someone to be unable to define God but still believe in Him is like believing in a “Vazhulak” (a nonsense word) without being able to define or describe it. Is such a belief rational? What God is and what He is not must be so clear to a rational human being that if they passed by God at a street corner one day, they would be able to recognize Him. Believers who have no definition for God cannot say anything meaningful about Him, because they cannot articulate what it is they believe in. If a God existed, would He prefer humans to know Him out of ignorance? Is it rational, or even ethical, to expect someone to live their entire life under the assumption that something called God exists when they cannot even define it?
Even at the beginning of the Resalahs (treatises) of Islamic jurists (Maraji’), it is emphasized that belief in Monotheism (Tawhid) must be intellect-driven and not based on blind imitation (Taqlid). Yet, many Muslims are incapable of defining God. This is not surprising, because Islamists are deeply terrified of spreading opposing views in society; hence, thinking in this field is in decline because one side has stolen all the loudspeakers.
Many religious thinkers believe that humans can never fully know God. Consequently, some evade trying to define Him. They do this for two reasons: first, defending a vague concept in debates about God helps them avoid being checkmated; second, they are weak individuals unwilling to rationally review their most deep-seated thoughts. In response to this view, one can ask: can humans fully know anything else? Is there anyone who fully knows mathematics? Is there anyone completely familiar with every concept in every branch of mathematics? Reaching such a status would require at least a few hundred years of life, during which new things would be added to mathematics anyway. Should this stop us from trying to understand mathematics?
Moreover, to define a thing, it does not need to be completely known. It is enough to provide an expression that uses familiar concepts to show what that thing is and what it is not—and doing this, as will be shown in the next section, is not all that difficult. A famous mystical (Erfani) speaker used to say: “You have reached God when you can no longer define Him.” This might be acceptable to a religious mind, but for a rationalist, it only signifies an irresponsible shutting down of the intellect. Such speakers know full well that if they thought about God clearly and precisely, God would no longer exist. These kinds of anti-reason claims have been challenged in a separate article titled “Is the Human Intellect Imperfect?”
To conclude this section, understanding God becomes much easier for a person after atheism. If God does not exist, then God is a human invention—and when humans invent something, they usually use what is available around them. Therefore, defining and understanding a God who does not exist is very easy, especially when one has no desire for His existence.
God in the Philosophy of Religion
In the philosophy of religion, the agreed-upon definition is usually that God is an all-perfect being, or Omni-max. Meaning, if He possesses an attribute, He possesses it to the absolute degree of perfection. Consequently, He is:
Omniscience: In knowledge, He knows everything (All-Knowing / Alim).
Omnipotent: In action, He can do anything (All-Powerful / Qadir).
Omnibenevolent: In goodness, He is the most good (All-Good).
Omnipresent: In space, He is everywhere.
These definitions are concepts that philosophers have debated and argued over for years, centuries, and millennia—from the ancient Greek philosophers to university classrooms around the world today. These are concepts that even played a historical role in shaping the conception of God in Semitic religions.
These definitions are generally agreed upon in specialized religious debates in both secular and non-secular institutions worldwide. However, it is clear that humanity uses the word “God” broadly in various other meanings. The belief of most religious theists—whether in living or dead religions—is usually that their God (whether Allah, Yahweh, Christ, Ahura Mazda, Zeus, Mithra, Aten, or Hera) has the following characteristics:
He is a being/existence, and His existence is objective.
He is the Creator.
He has a personality, consciousness, and free will.
He is the designer, sustainer, and observer.
He is good and benevolent.
He is merciful/kind.
He is beautiful.
He is great.
He is forgiving and just.
He is supernatural, non-material, non-physical, without a body, and metaphysical.
He is eternal, without beginning or end, and immortal.
He is flawless and perfect.
He is constant in His essence.
He is infinite.
He is unique/unparalleled.
He is holy.
After agreeing on what God is, the first series of questions arises regarding whether a God with such attributes can even exist. Something that contains a contradiction in its very definition—like a four-sided circle—does not even make sense, let alone exist. Articles on this topic can be found in the section on logical arguments disproving the existence of God.
By holding a clear and common meaning of God, one can logically argue for or against His existence. The Zandiq website refutes the most common and famous arguments for the existence of God in detail:
The Cosmological Argument (The Argument from Causality), causality, and the logical impossibility of a divine cause.
The Teleological Argument (The Argument from Order).
The Argument from Fitrah (Innate Nature).
God in the Quran
There is usually a massive, glaring disparity between the conception a modern Muslim has of God and the portrayal of God drawn by the Quran. The belief that exists in the minds of Muslims is mostly a figment of their own imagination. Or, if they are educated in this field, it resembles the views of Muslim philosophers and the Islamic intellectual tradition. This tradition was shaped by Islamic thinkers centuries after Muhammad’s life, drawing from their familiarity with ancient Greek philosophy and other religions in the region (such as Christianity, Judaism, and ancient Iranian faiths). This occurred during historical periods when Islam spread from the Arabian Peninsula into ancient Iran—a place where schools, universities, and deep intellectual traditions already existed. In that era, Islam could no longer advance solely through brutality and violence; because it ruled over a vast populace, it required judges, jurists, and political thought. Muslims could not defend Islam with just the Quran or the sword; hence, they needed to produce intellectual philosophy. You can read more details on this in the article titled “Did Islam Bring Science to Iran?”
Following the definition of God provided above, now is a good time to compare this concept with what is called “Allah” in the Quran. The God of the Quran is vastly different from the God mentioned by great theistic philosophers. He is not a God constructed out of intellect, but a God who served Muhammad’s practical purposes. Therefore, the Quran’s descriptions of God are highly primitive. The God of the Quran is a God who exhibits human emotions and behaviors: He gets angry, and He plots (Makr). There are verses in the Quran that depict God as weak and ignorant. Aside from this, Muhammad and his companions naturally knew nothing about supernatural existence in the way Muslims later learned from the Greeks during the Abbasid era. For this reason, God in the Quran is actually very physical. Ridiculous descriptions of God can be found in the Quran—for instance, that He moves, has a physical location and a throne (Arsh), possesses eyes, a face, and a shin, and is even referred to as an “object” (Shay’). For more evidence and explanations, refer to the article titled “Comparing Allah and God.”
The Word “Khoda” (God) in Persian and its Significance
In many conversations with Persian speakers, one often hears that Khoda means “to come to oneself” (Khod-A / self-coming). Having debated God extensively with non-Persian speakers as well, the question always arose for me: why do others never give such a definition? Not Western Christians, nor even our Arab neighbors. Furthermore, I learned that today, 1400 years after the advent of Islam, almost no non-Arab Islamized country uses a word other than “Allah” for God; this is only seen in Iran or neighboring regions with close cultural ties. For example, in Turkey, Pakistan, and Indonesia, while people might use colloquial phrases similar to “Khoda Hafez” (Goodbye), “Khoda ra khosh nemi-ayad” (God wouldn’t like it), or “Ey Khoda” (Oh God), they use the word “Allah” as the official name of God in Islam and lack a native replacement word in their local language.
One must realize that language is a tool. We humans, like many other living creatures, communicate with one another by producing sound waves, and the protocol of this communication is the language we speak; language is fundamentally this and nothing more. Because of this, there is no guarantee that these words hold a one-to-one relationship with objective reality and the world around us. Sometimes, language can cause confusion. For instance, if the word “Khoda” did not exist in modern Persian and only the word “Izad” existed, writing these few paragraphs in this article would not have been necessary.
However, this language also has a historical dimension. It is a heritage from the past and the result of experiences and reflections passed down freely and with love from one generation to the next, from parent to child. It has been said that our language knows things about us that we ourselves do not know. A people’s language is largely shaped by their writers and thinkers. Since we have been afflicted and assaulted by Islam, our literary figures used their immense cultural influence to maintain a highly critical view of religion.
Hafez, for instance, portrays ascetics (Zahedin) as exhibiting the basest behaviors, constantly insulting the Zahed—the modern equivalent of the Mullahs—depicting them as hypocritical, ignorant, and shallow-minded. Rumi transforms the Moses of the Quran into a wise and understanding Moses in the story of Moses and the Shepherd. One day, during a conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I heard a non-Iranian Jewish man reference the story of Moses and the Shepherd, using it as proof that Jews are people of tolerance, understanding, life, and friendship. The power and beauty of these stories are so profound that this person did not even know that the story has nothing to do with the Torah or Judaism, but is a story invented by Rumi. How vast is the gap between the Moses of Jewish religious books—who possesses the same level of intellect and tolerance as Noah (who, according to Muslims and Jews alike, colluded with Allah or Yahweh to mass-slaughter all of humanity except his own family)—and Rumi’s Moses? These wisdoms, which we learn from childhood through the sweetest, melodic, and memorable verses, play a direct role in shaping our conception of God. This God in the mind of Iranian believers is very different from the God of the Quran. The adoption of the word “Khoda” in the Persian language is the result of a victory over Islam; it is the outcome of our ancestors’ efforts to dilute authentic Islamic teachings and replace them with superior values.
The view that Khoda means “to come to oneself” is a belief completely compatible with Iranian culture and incompatible with the concept of God in Islam and other dogmatic faiths. It shows that even after the Islamic invasion of Iran, Iranians kept their own gods.
If God only means “coming to oneself” and is not the creator of humanity or a real entity existing somewhere outside of us, then this God is no longer the God of the Quran or other religions. Instead, it is a human being who has realized their humanity; beauties and sublimities have essentially become God. Atheists think the exact same way. In other words, non-Islamic Iranian mystical teachings and their understanding of humanity—insofar as they are humanistic and not Islamic—are assets that every Iranian benefits from, whether theist or atheist. This spiritual look at the concept of God is entirely different from the analytical view usually found in the philosophy of religion.
Sometimes, Iranian theists use this topic in conversations as an excuse to escape real debates about the existence of God. It is clear that this issue stems more from the limitations of language as a communication tool. Two Frenchmen never debate whether God means “coming to oneself” when discussing God. Furthermore, it is irrational for someone to call themselves a theist simply because they have relabeled an idea or a physical object as “God.” It is like me deciding from now on to call a carrot “God,” and then calling myself a theist because carrots obviously exist.
However, the mystical and non-philosophical view of life and the universe also holds value in its own right and is useful and educational for some. The Zandiq website does not strive to combat the mystical God, because Zandiq is centered around analytical and meticulous debate, not mysticism and literature. Yet, atheists have examined God from this perspective as well. For example, the works of Nietzsche and other continental philosophers—which, like Rumi’s Masnavi, are narrative-driven, literary, and artistic—or Enlightenment-era European writers like Voltaire, expressed anti-God views that our culture would classify as a mystical perspective.
God in Everyday Speech
In my encounters with certain individuals who, under the influence of Islamic upbringing, have not thought much about God, I have noticed they seem to assume they are theists simply because they use the word “God” in everyday speech. Or, I have heard it assumed that a person is a theist—and consequently superstitious—because they use phrases like “Be name Khoda” (In the name of God), “Bandeye Khoda” (Servant of God / Poor soul), “Tora Khoda” (For God’s sake), “Khoda ra khosh nemi-ayad” (God wouldn’t like it), etc. This is merely a linguistic habit. We do not need to alter the Persian language; our language is so rich that it becomes even simpler and more beautiful without the word “God.” We only need to think about why we use the word “God” and instead express our meaning with clearer, more realistic phrases.
Aside from this, today in major population centers around the world—in public spaces like schools, universities, hospitals, sidewalks, and workplaces—people do not use religious phrases or the word “God.” This is the prerequisite for a diverse civil society and stems purely from goodwill and benevolence. In these societies, people use the word “God” inside mosques and churches, unless a theist actively decides to proselytize. Therefore, suggestions for replacing the word “God” are offered below:
Be name Khoda (In the name of God): Usually said at the beginning of serious speeches to grab the audience’s attention and start a speech or class. Instead, you can say “Ba doroud” (Greetings/With regards), or show warmth to the audience, welcome them, and thank them for giving you their time.
Inshallah (God willing): Usually said to express hope for a positive event in the future. In most cases, you can simply say “Omidvaram” (I hope). For example, instead of “Inshallah arouz beshi” (God willing, you will become a bride), say “Omidvaram arouz beshi” (I hope you become a bride).
Khoda-vakili (God as my witness / Honestly): Swearing an oath is an old custom and has its place, such as in a court of law. A human being, instead of swearing by God, can just take a standard oath. Outside of court, it is better to earn credibility so people believe you without needing an oath. Fraudsters and liars have a desperate need to swear oaths. In some cases, instead of dragging God and the Prophet’s household into it, one can simply say “Bavar kon” (Believe me).
Khodayish (God-knows / Fairly speaking): Used to emphasize that one must look at something realistically and fairly. Instead, one can say “Agarche” (Although), “Berasti” (Truly), “Dar haghighat” (In truth), or “Agar monsefane negah konim” (If we look at it fairly).
Khoda ra khosh nemi-ayad (God won’t like it): Used when a somewhat unethical act is about to happen. Instead, one can say “Kare dorosti nist” (It is not the right thing to do) or “Kari gheyre-akhlaqi ast” (It is an unethical act).
Khoda khast (God willed it): Usually said to show humility about something we wanted that successfully happened. Instead, one can say “Kar jour shod” (It worked out), “An-towr ke mikhastim shod” (It turned out the way we wanted), or “Owza bar vefge morad shod” (Things went according to our desires).
God After Atheism
Conceiving atheism is difficult for some believers, but if they reflect, they will realize they already have experience with atheism. For example, a Hindu is an atheist relative to the God of Islam, a Christian does not believe in the God of Islam, and a Jew does not believe in the God of Christianity.
After atheism, the word “God” becomes a term that carries different meanings depending on the listener. By traveling to different parts of the world and speaking with different people, one can easily understand that humans invent words for God, and their definition of God is linked to their local superstitions. Because humans created God, gods are actually geographical and historical phenomena, much like other customs and behaviors of a people. Sometimes, among large populations such as Buddhists, they do not even exist, because many religions are not god-centered. Unlike gods, however, respectful and friendly behavior and smiling are appreciated by all human beings.
Gods have changed tremendously throughout history, becoming more perfect and complex. A brief look at the history of any nation shows that the more advanced they became in science and philosophy, the more advanced their gods became accordingly. This clearly demonstrates that gods are a figment of the human mind. As the saying goes: “It is not God who sends religions to Earth; it is religions that send God into the sky.” Humans, viewing themselves as temporary beings who inherited their existence from prior entities, named the initial entity—which is logically a flawed concept—the “Necessary Being” (Wajib al-Wujud), which can be considered another definition for God. One of the greatest errors that drives humans toward theism is the “God of the Gaps” fallacy, which is explained in the article titled “What is the God of the Gaps?” A highly fascinating comparison of the gods of Semitic religions can be found in the third section of the book Tavalodi Digar (Another Birth).
Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher of Jewish descent, reached a similar conclusion through a rigorous study of religious texts and said: “If a triangle could speak, it would describe God as a triangle, and if a circle wanted to conceive God, it would imagine Him as a circle.” The God that Hitler believed in made Hitler superior to other races. In short, one can understand a person’s character from the God they imagine. If a person believes God is kind and forgives everyone, you can infer that they themselves are kind and forgiving. If a person like the Prophet Muhammad envisions his God as a criminal, a sadist, and full of complexes—pouring molten copper down the throats of disbelievers—you can infer that he himself possessed such a temperament. This simply shows that humanity creates God, not that God creates humanity.
God may occupy a massive portion of a believer’s life because they have not learned how to live on their own. However, after atheism, God is no longer of any importance—unless one encounters an aggressive theist, or is forced to speak up due to the nuisances and harms of religion in social and personal life. Otherwise, atheists do not think much about God. God is a mythical creature, much like djinns, fairies, the Simurgh, Dracula, and the Hidden Imam, which humans invented because they felt weak against natural and physical forces—invented to deceive themselves so they wouldn’t feel defenseless. Humans felt helpless in the face of death and did not want to accept that death is the eternal destruction of their physical body; they felt helpless against nature and did not want to accept that nature could decide their fate. For all these fears and anxieties, they created gods to act like an older brother who accompanies them and protects them. An atheist does not need such absurdities to live a good life.
