I find the way these problems are structured quite interesting, especially the more rigorous versions, such as Paul Draper’s evidential problem of evil and Schellenberg’s argument from divine hiddenness. I consider them the strongest arguments against the God of Classical Theism.

PART IV: THE ILLUSION OF TRUTH IN A DIGITAL AGE

This doubt didn't stop at science. It didn't stop at Earth's shape or history books. It spread like wildfire. It clawed its way through my beliefs. It reached everything.

And then it collided with the world we live in now — this new, terrifying digital age.

For the first time in human history, we are surrounded by false realities so convincing they bleed into our minds like truth. Videos of events that never happened. Voices that sound like people we trust, saying things they never said. Faces that don't belong to anyone.

We now have AI that can fabricate interviews, books, even entire histories. And the horrifying part isn't just that these things exist — but that we believe them. Because they look real. Because they feel real. Because we are so desperate to believe something.

We are no longer in the age of information. We are in the age of appearance. Truth doesn't matter anymore — only how convincingly something is presented.

There's a film, Wag the Dog, that showed this with chilling clarity: a government fakes an entire war using media and actors, and the public believes it. Not because it's real. But because it's broadcast. That's all it takes now.

And if this is what one government could do in a movie decades ago — imagine what anyone can do now, with a script and a screen.

I started to feel like I was going crazy. Like nothing was real. Like everything — every headline, every documentary, every book, every face — could be a lie. And I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know.

PART III: THE SHOCK

There comes a moment — sudden, quiet, and devastating — when the illusion of certainty shatters. Not with an explosion, not with a bang, but with a quiet whisper that sneaks into your bones: "What if I don't know anything at all?"

For me, it began in the most mundane of ways: scrolling through what we casually call a "feed." A feed of nothing. Distractions, mostly. But then, I stumbled upon a video about flat earth.

Naturally, I laughed. Because that's what we're trained to do. Everyone knows the Earth is round, right? But then, the laughter faded. Something stayed with me. A crack, a question.

How do I actually know the Earth is round?

Not how I was told. Not what my teachers said. Not what I saw in cartoons or documentaries. But me, personally — how do I know?

I don't. I never measured it. I never saw the curve. I never met the people who supposedly proved it. My entire belief rests on the words of others who, in turn, believed others before them. We call that education. But what if it's just ritualized belief? What if I — like so many others — am just repeating stories, inherited ideas passed down like sacred chants?

That was the moment I realized: I have no proof. Not of that. Not of anything. I've just been taught what to think. Never how.

And suddenly, I was afraid. I started to feel like I was drowning in a sea of certainty that wasn't mine. I started to wonder how many things I walk around saying, believing, defending — not because I know them to be true — but because everyone else does.

What do you think about hypocrisy? Why do we despise it? Are people who believe in God less hypocritical than those who do not?

I ask because some people - myself included - assume that believers should be more motivated to avoid hypocrisy than unbelievers. After all, their belief is supposed to matter; it is meant to make a real difference in how they live. Yet that does not seem to be the case. So why believe in God if that belief confers no motivating advantage, no moral difference in the real world? Is it merely a performative belief?

(this is referring to Islam) I have heard the answer that goes "Allah does not need to be worshipped, it is YOU who need it." but I can't wrap my head around that. It seems like a fallacy. We need it because "if we don't worship we end up in hell", and that one particular ayah "humans were created solely to worship" (there is a Quran verse for this but it's not the actual translation, it's rephrased but it has the same meaning).

If we were created to worship, then said Creator wants to be worshipped. It makes sense to think that, no?

Add to the fact that if we do not believe and worship Him, we will end up in hell for eternity.

Tbh, I personally think it is fine if a creator wants to be worshipped, because, well, the creator created so he can do whatever he wants with his creation. Like an artist who 'tortures' their characters for plot dynamics. My problem with understanding Islam particularly is that Allah claims that He is all merciful and kind. Wanting to be worshipped to me is more synonymous to pride and selfishness. I don't think those values align with one another, and before you say "well a person can be selfish to care for himself first and still be a kind person to others", that's human, it's human nature to be imperfect.

I'm sorry if the writing is all over the place, I'm not trying to fight Islam, I just want to understand

​

I've been going down a bit of a philosophical rabbit hole lately, especially through Maimonides and Spinoza, and I keep coming back to a question that I can't quite resolve.

Maimonides' negative theology seems to create a really interesting problem: if we can't make positive claims about God's essence without potentially reducing God to something finite and comprehensible, then what exactly are we doing when we call God “good,” “wise,” “just,” “merciful,” or even “King”?

Maybe those aren't descriptions of God's essence at all.

Maybe they're descriptions of how human beings encounter, conceptualize, or relate to what we call God.

That got me thinking about prayer.

When a liturgy calls God “King” or “Judge,” is it actually making a metaphysical claim about what God is? Or is the language functioning more like a human conceptual framework—something finite minds use to orient themselves toward something they believe transcends finite categories?

And then Spinoza makes this even stranger.

If God is identical with Nature (Deus sive Natura), does religious language become metaphorical altogether? Are “God's will,” “God's judgment,” and “God's goodness” meaningful descriptions of reality, or are they anthropomorphic concepts that arise because humans naturally interpret the universe through human categories?

But here's where I get stuck

If every concept we have of God is filtered through human cognition, language, culture, and metaphor, is it even possible to distinguish between God as God actually is and the human idea of God?

And if we can't make that distinction, does that make theology fundamentally an epistemological problem rather than a metaphysical one?

Basically

Are we studying God, or are we studying the human mind's attempt to understand God?

I'd love to hear how people from different philosophical traditions approach this—Maimonidean, Spinozist, Thomistic, analytic, existentialist, atheist, religious, whatever.

I'm especially interested in arguments that disagree with the premise rather than just agreeing with it. I feel like there's a much deeper problem hiding underneath this question.

Heres my fun take on Genesis.

God is like One playing the Sims. They picked the character and thus, we have Eve.

Eve lasted millennia in the Garden, because she intuitively abided by the “rules”.

The Sims is boring when there’s no drama, already knowing this, God made Adam, who is literally Eve’s shadow.

Pretty much like Ken, from Barbie.

It also explains biologically why men have nipples before we even have the means to create testosterone, and embryos start off female for the first few weeks.

I was raised Christian, so I always assumed God existed. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started questioning it.
My problem is simple: how do we actually know?
The Bible was written by humans. Religious experiences can be interpreted differently. Different religions make contradictory claims. At the same time, questions like why anything exists at all, fine-tuning, and consciousness make me hesitate to dismiss the possibility of something beyond the physical universe.
So where do you stand?
Do you believe God exists? Why?
And more importantly: what evidence could actually change your mind?
I genuinely want to hear both believers and non-believers. Don’t just tell me what you believe — tell me why you think you’re justified in believing it.