This is the spiritual history centered on philosophy and ethics—my worldview—of someone who lost their father to suicide at age 12, read Camus at 14, fell in love with Inukai Michiko’s writings, learned the cause of their father’s death at 17, spent 18 years in furious anger at God without ever doubting His existence, realized that this unwavering anger was itself a form of prayer, received Protestant baptism at 35, and is now in their late 40s.
I want to clearly state that I have no intention of criticizing any specific individuals or organizations.
Prologue: The Role of Religion and Theological Questions
In modern society, where the influence of traditional religion and community has weakened, what is religion? It is not merely an object of faith, but a starting point for many social and ethical considerations.
As “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” shows, human societies needed common narratives to form groups exceeding Dunbar’s number (approximately 150 people). Religions and ideologies functioned as these narratives. Before the Bible existed, ancient Mesopotamian epics like “The Epic of Gilgamesh” and Egyptian mythology shaped people’s worldviews.
However, from this perspective, where was the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent God? Prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies had no concept of modern religious ideas. These were pre-writing societies. Furthermore, if humans were created “in God’s image,” I wonder why we have limitations such as working memory constraints and Dunbar’s number. And why didn’t the Creator leave clear “signs” of His existence in the structure of the universe or subatomic particles?
Imagine a gamification where as our science advances, we discover more of God’s signs: “Hey, you’ve observed galaxy clusters this far!” or “Can you see this signature in the elementary particles?”
When reflecting on the tragedies of Auschwitz or genocides, God’s silence feels like an abdication of responsibility. If He is omnipotent, why didn’t He prevent these tragedies? I find explanations involving free will, trials, or “God’s inscrutable ways” inadequate. For example, after World War I, the reparations imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles amounted to approximately 132 billion Marks. If this economic burden contributed to the rise of Nazism, I sometimes imagine that God could have dispatched 445,400 people (one for every 150 Germans in a population of 66.81 million) who would appear as Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, or an intelligent, attentive listener depending on whether the recipient was Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or an atheist minority—a being who could appear differently to different people yet be one entity—to listen to grievances and provide encouragement, potentially preventing tragedy and war.
These questions lead directly to the problem of “theodicy”—the existence of God and His moral nature. If an omnipotent and all-good God exists, isn’t the existence of evil and suffering contradictory?
The Boundary Between God and Ethics
After 18 years of searching for answers to this difficult problem, I applied the psychological concept of boundaries. God has His boundaries, and humans have theirs. Most evils, excluding accidents and natural disasters, arise from humans’ inability to manage their malice, anger, and jealousy.
The human brain has primitive emotional responses and higher functions that control them. What I call “stimulus and reflex”—training in anger management and emotional regulation can help address reactions that begin before we decide to be angry. In this way, malice can be maintained in an inactive state. Rather than eliminating it completely, I worked on coexisting with it without stress.
But what does it mean that the Creator made “Adam” so difficult to train, and that “Eve,” made from Adam’s rib, faces the same issues? These questions go beyond theological explanation.
Considering agnosticism, we can argue that “God transcends human understanding and is therefore unprovable.” However, this risks falling into an infinite loop. Philosophy sometimes resembles poetry in its ability to handle undefined concepts, which can lead to unanswerable questions. That’s why providing premises and context, as Rawls and Butler did, makes these concepts more tangible and concrete.
The Structure and Contradictions of Faith
I also question the concept of original sin central to religion. What would you think of this logic: “You have a debt of over 3 million US dollars that you don’t remember. But good news! Someone has paid it all for you”?
Original sin, its cause, and the grace said to have paid for it are all difficult to verify concretely through our five senses. There are also cultural disconnects. For example, Japanese harvest festivals take the form of offerings, and we aren’t accustomed to concepts like burnt sacrifices. I sense differences in traditions between agricultural and nomadic peoples—it feels quite dynamic.
Furthermore, it contradicts logic that an omniscient, omnipotent God couldn’t foresee that Adam and Eve would be tempted by the serpent to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:6). Was this God’s management failure? Or if it was God’s own staging, is He really “good”?
As Bible scholar Takashi Kato points out, the concept of “covenant” in Abraham’s time also deserves careful consideration. While there may have been a culture of forming connections with higher beings, covenants should be made between equals. Since covenants imply that human actions can influence divine actions, this creates a structure where humans can manipulate God, which is contradictory.
I also struggle with determining which parts of the Bible should be understood as “stories.” Were the pre-Mosaic accounts simply the beliefs of Moses’ tribe? It would be easier if there were encrypted notes that could be decoded with quantum computers saying, “Given your civilization’s level, read this part as a story.” How should we apply myths told at the level of ancient civilization to the modern world?
The Imbalance of Creation and God’s Silence
These questions ultimately boil down to: “Whether God exists or not, why should we act ethically?” The will to behave ethically even without surveillance cameras, the pride in self-determination—these are universal strengths independent of religious beliefs or atheistic positions.
When we ask, “Should we engage in war, conflict, exploitation, and violence just because we can?” we can find answers that everyone can share regardless of their beliefs.
In religious practice, we should always keep several important questions in mind:
1. Am I using God or religion to justify myself?
2. Am I using God’s silence as an excuse for my own foolishness or lack of spiritual training?
3. Am I suppressing victims’ voices with words like “trial” or “God’s ways”?
4. What specifically is the “God” I believe in, and is my concept consistent? (Buddhism, pantheism, spirituality, the Japanese practices of needle memorial services and tsukumogami—the animation of objects—vary from person to person)
We should be cautious about perpetuating the same mindset as religious tribunals from Copernicus’s time. Ideally, believers should choose to “serve the weak and poor” rather than seeking “comfortable chairs and convenient passports.”
The Possibility of God’s Existence and Cosmic Perspective
Nietzsche declared “God is dead” and advocated the Übermensch philosophy. But do we need the concept of “superman” to accept and live with suffering? From my experience, I feel it’s sufficient to train ourselves to want to act ethically.
Nietzsche metaphorically spoke of the “death” of a supposedly omniscient and omnipotent God and despaired over it. However, humans have lived without the concept of God since the time of our ancestors (Mitochondrial Eve) when there was no Bible. There might have been some myths, but they haven’t survived. Nietzsche’s thought may have been radicalized as a reaction to medieval religious oppression.
For example, atheists like Camus seem to philosophize more freely, and I don’t think Butler despaired either. So what should I do? There’s also the agnostic position. Having received baptism with the wish that fiction would be maintained, even as fiction, I can pray and entrust myself to the teachings. Whether God exists or not.
Through anger management, I’ve learned to train my emotional costs, management, and how to be angry, gaining sharper ethical perspectives. Without shouting inside myself, it’s quieter, isn’t it? With more time where reason prevails instead of being hijacked by anger, I can analyze calmly and make more accurate judgments. And I can be conscious of my responsibility.
Dialogue Between Faith and Science
In contemporary religious debates, the balance between scientific thinking and faith is important:
1. Denial of evolution: The question “Are lizards or chickens evolving right this moment before our eyes?” misunderstands the mechanism of evolution (accumulation of mutations). Also, Genesis doesn’t catalog modern cat breeds like Abyssinian, Scottish Fold, American Shortheart, or Singapura. Naturally, they couldn’t be included before Columbus reached the Americas, but it’s strange that an omniscient being wouldn’t know. If there were too many to list, I’d like to know why that wasn’t mentioned in the Bible.
2. The abortion issue: Ethical perspectives change over time. Finding infanticide from the Edo period cruel today is one example. The definitions of rights and life might change as technology advances to include sperm, eggs, fertilized eggs, or even somatic cells that could become clones.
However, regardless of future changes, we live in the present. Simply imposing faith is undesirable. We cannot ignore complex realities such as maternal life, teenage pregnancy, and sexual violence victims. After all, Jesus treated prostitutes, who were discriminated against in his society, as human beings. We can choose our actions based on the essence of teachings rather than what we want to believe or how we learned the teachings.
To those who impose religious correctness by any means, I hope they will search for their own answers starting from this question: “Please explain why you act this way. If you cannot explain, don’t do what you cannot explain. If you can explain, know shame as a believer and as a human being.”
Conclusion: The Meaning of Being Human
Through theological and ethical questions, we’ve groped for the contours of “being human.” Whether God exists or not, we have the freedom to live with ethics, reason, and pride.
Through the contradiction of understanding agnosticism yet offering prayers, I confirm my essence. It is the courage to not give up even when faced with the unknowable. The spirit of inquiry and perseverance.
The value of controlling emotions through anger management to gain sharper ethical perspectives is so great that I must emphasize it again.
Ultimately, this essay aims not to determine the existence of God or the truth of religion, but to find guidance on how I can remain myself. It begins and ends with mutual respect across differences in strength, weakness, gender, age, nationality, and culture.
The question “Can you be ethical even when unobserved?” serves as a constant bassline in my life—not about being conscious of God’s eye, but a talisman for remaining human.