About this life and the next

I am a muslim. I believe God has made us for a purpose; I believe there will be a judgement day that we have to take responsibility for our actions.

When I teach courses at the university I often get depressed with students who don't want to think. There are many who love to code or willing to spend hours in my office hour with the hope that I spit out the solution to the HW. They'd rather do all of that instead of thinking (deeply) on the problem for 5 minutes. Over time, I noticed many humans have the same attitude towards death, after life, god, and anything which they do not have to deal with immediately. They'd rather work, have fun, eat, etc, but not spend even 5 minutes thinking about beyond our material daily life. On the contrast if you start reading Quran, you see what a meticulous book it is. You have to spend hours understanding the meanings and intensions.

Pascal's Argument: Pascal had a very simple argument (which is the basis of Markov decision processes): It says suppose we believe that there is a positive probability that there is an after-life (I don't think there is any scientific theory to rule out an after life; in fact, for all I know scientists keep getting closer (every day) to the possibility of bringing the dead back to life, e.g., by reconstruction based on the genome). Then, since it is claimed that the after-life is up to infinity, even if this event has a tiny probability we are still better off making decisions that we don't suffer in the after-life for eternity! It is surprising to me that many mathematicians and computer scientist don't take this simple argument into account. If we live like a believer there is a epsilon chance that we gain an infinite reward and say 1-epsilon chance that we lose some of the fun in this world. So, any rational human should be better off living like a believer.

Why am I a muslim?

1. As a mathematician, how can I believe in something I cannot prove?

   One of my favorite theorems in Mathematics is Godel's incompleteness theorem which shows that there are true statements in the world that provably have no proofs. I believe God is a truth of this kind. The beauty of God is that you don't need to be a scientist or a mathematician to understand him. Everyone can, as long as they try to think beyond their daily life. God is the very same person that we pray for in the moment of need.

2. You cannot prove God, so how can you believe in him?

   There are many laws in basic sciences, Physics, Chemistry, etc that we cannot prove but we believe in them why? Because they are consistent with our model of how the world works, and they explain many observations. I find having a unique God, God of Ibraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad, the most consistent theory for how the world started, for why there is such a sophisticated book like Quran written 1500 years ago, and for why in physics it seems all laws are really special cases of a unique law and for why, we humans, unlike animals, have a tendency to be good as opposed to evil.

A Theory of Creation

Like a scientific theory, I can create a theory of how the world was created in the first place, why was it created, etc and observe how much of this theory is consistent with our observations. A non-believer can also create their theory and then try to justify our observations. Next, I am gong to explain some of the questions that a non-believer needs to answer:

• Why all Ibrahimic religions support each other? If Mohammad was really going after obtaining power, why did he need to give the same message as what Moses, Jesus and Ibraham gave thousand of years before? Shouldn't he distinguish himself, like every other human being who seeks power? (note that as a muslim, this issue is very well consistent with my theory as they all conveyed messages from the same source).
• We know from very laws of physics that existence of life seems like a very low probability event. For example, if gravity was not proportional to inverse of distance squared we wouldn't have this world. Why the constants of this world was so meticulously chosen that life exists? Let me note that some physicists go after a hypothesis of existence of (infinitely) many parallel worlds to answer this question.
• Lastly, how such an advanced book, Quran, was written 1500 years ago if it was all made by a human? If you are new to Quran, but you like art, I suggest reading the Surat of Yusef. It is a plot of a beautiful (real story) movie. It is full of surprises and art. You see many of the mondern movie-making techniques, e.g., flash backs, change of scenery, speed, etc. It is as if you are watching say a Tarantino's movie, just that it is written 1500 years ago.

1. Why was life created in the first place?

   This is an excellent question with many answers. Here are some of my thoughts:

   • God is the creator, if anything is possible to create he will create it. Humans seem are so unique because of their self-conscious. They are the only creature who can lie, pretend, and decide to be good or bad. I work in computer science and it is inevitable to think what it means for a robot to be self-conscious and have freedom of will. It seems impossible to create such an object.
   • If you read Quran's first surah you see God's answer: It was clear to God and his angles that humans are going to have wars and kill each other (because they can lie), yet, it was so fond to create them because some characteristics of God can only be put to use by humans. For example, they are the only creature who need God so desperately that they understand God's kindness and merci.
2. What about evil? Why is there an evil in the world and what is its purpose?

   One of the main purposes of our life is to separate good from bad. God mentions this again and again in Quran. For example, the second Ayat of Surat Ankabut says: "Do men fancy that they will be left just upon their declaring "we believe" and they will not be tested?". We will be tested by being put in safe or evil situations. We may lose our money, our children, our house, etc to be tested if we are still a believer. And only then if we ace these tests, we may end up successful.

   This point of view also answers another questions I often get asked: If God is so desperate for us to be believers, why doesn't he show us a very magical un-ordinary miracle, e.g., that stones fall from sky or that a sea gets disappeared in a single day. As far as I understand, being a beliver is valuable only if it is done on our own. If God shows us a miracle then there is no value; perhaps, a famous example is the story of pharaoh in Quran who wouldn't believe in God, until the Nile river open up in two pieces (a.k.a. the passover event) and while he was going across he drowned. At the moment of drowning he said now I believe in God, but God responds now is too late!

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