Ahmida Bendjoudi I think that the problems with religions – if you take them literally – are wider and deeper. Does a creator have to create each living thing? This would include, for example, each of the billions of bacteria living in your gut right now. And are viruses living? Do they need to be created? And when organisms reproduce, are they allowed to get on with it, or does the creator personally oversee every offspring? And what about plants? Fungi?
Beyond the bewildering number of creations required is an even more fundamental question : why? You can understand why a creator might create swallows or salmon, but why the thousands of varieties of sloth (most of which are now extinct)? Why sloths? Why so many different sloths?
And why create disease organisms? What's the point of a child dying of measles?
Believing in a being who created everything means, I think, living with many, many unanswerable questions, not just about what the creator does but about why things are as they are.
These are the things that thankfully have no place in Buddhism.
Ahmida Bendjoudi The questions are not just unanswered, but unanswerable, even in principle. I think that religions only bring people the comfort of certainty when they do not ask what they are certain of. Once they do, certainty vanishes. It is hard even to understand the questions that are raised by the idea of a creator, and, I believe, impossible to answer these questions.
Those with the deepest faith are those who constantly look terrified by what they believe. This is why, I think, religions have been asset-stripped by commercialism, making them into something vague and comforting called "spirituality". Remove all the important questions from religion and you have a tranquilliser drug that can be easily commercialised.
Ahmida Bendjoudi I think that this is what happens in religious faith. Faith must entail living with uncertainty, with a sense that the unanswered questions are not just bewildering but frightening. Once you go down the route of believing in a creator, then you realise that this creator has a lot of explaining to do, and that the creator does not provide any explanation at all. This silence is what you have to live with.
Verdi's Te Deum ends with a dramatic illustration of this. The last verse is I have trusted in You, Lord; do not betray that trust. The soloist repeats the words I have trusted in You. The orchestra plays a wafting, otherworldly snatch of music. But the soloist repeats the words. Again the orchestra tries to lead her away, but she insists, and the whole choir and orchestra rise up with the words. But what happens next is terrifying. Their prayer echoes and dies away, and all that is left are the strings, high, high up, and the basses low down. And in between, a huge empty musical space
The prayer goes out into an endless emptiness.
Somehow, for me, that sums things up. Here it is :https://youtu.be/YcNid3Vioj4?t=731
Ronán Michael Conroy , If you encounter direct spiritual contact (such as with Djin, or any other spiritual being), would that affect your view of God?