Lots of people, friends and family alike, have often wondered whether or not I believe in God, more importantly in their God. An interesting question given the circumstance that point to the rather obvious. I do not go to the temples unless I am nagged or told I have to do it for my dead ancestors. I also never pray and often put on a show for my elders because I do not believe in personal God.

It may sound like I’m an Atheist. But call it whatever you want. I strongly believe that God that does not rule over the universe by providence, but a God which itself is the deterministic system of which everything in nature is a part. Thus, God is the natural world and He or She has no personality.

I am determinist who holds that absolutely everything that happens occurs through the operation of necessity. For me, even human behavior is fully determined, with freedom being our capacity to know we are determined and to understand why we act as we do. So freedom is not the possibility to say “no” to what happens to us but the possibility to say “yes” and fully understand why things should necessarily happen that way. By forming more “adequate” ideas about what we do and our emotions or affections, we become the adequate cause of our effects (internal or external), which entails an increase in activity (versus passivity). This means that we become both more free and more like God.