ARGUMENTS AGAINST GOD AND RELIGION — Part I
ARGUMENTS AGAINST GOD AND RELIGION — Part I
From Physical Sciences
ATHEIST thinkers dismiss religion as being unfounded in fact. They maintain that it springs from man’s desire to find meaning in the universe. While the urge to find an explanation is not in itself wrong, they hold that the inadequacy of our predecessors’ knowledge led them to wrong conclusions; namely, the existence of a God or gods; the notions that creation and destruction were a function of the godhead; that man’s fate was of concern to God; that there was a life after death in heaven or hell, as warranted by the morality of man’s life on earth, and that all thinking on these matters must necessarily be regulated by religion. Here we examine the arguments against God or religion based on physical sciences.
Arguments against God and religion based on Physical Sciences
Atheist thinkers feel that in light of the scientific revolution, man is now in a position to make a re-appraisal of traditional ways of thinking and to rectify errors of interpretation, just as in secular matters he has already exploded myths and overturned false hypotheses whenever facts and experience have forced the truth upon him.
If events are due to natural causes, they are not due to supernatural causes.—Julian Huxley
According to Auguste Comte, a well-known French philosopher of the first half of the nineteenth century, the history of man’s intellectual development can be divided into three stages—the theological stage, when events of the universe are explained in terms of divine powers; the metaphysical stage, in which we find no mention of specific gods (although external factors are still referred to in order to explain events); and the stage of positivism, where events are explained in terms of common laws deduced from observation and calculation without having recourse to spirit, God or absolute power. We are now passing through the third intellectual stage that in philosophical terms, is known as Logical Positivism.
Scientific empiricism, or logical positivism, became a regular movement in the second quarter of the 20th century, but as a trend of thought, it had already—long before—taken hold of people’s minds. From Hume and Mill up to the time of Bertrand Russell, many philosophers have been its proponents, and it has now become the most important contemporary trend of thought, buttressed as it is by numerous centres of research and propagation all over the world. Logical positivism is defined as:
The philosophy of science (and knowledge) that holds that only statements that can be verified through logic or empirical data are true and meaningful.
Atheists feel, therefore, that man’s recent mental evolution is the antithesis of religious thinking. Modern, advanced knowledge claims that reality is only that which can stand up to the tests of observation and experience, whereas religion is based on a concept of reality which cannot, in this way, be subjected to analysis and scientifically proven: it follows then that it has no basis in actuality. In other words, religion gives an unrealistic account of real events. Since man’s knowledge was limited in ancient times, the correct explanations of natural phenomena were bound to elude him.
Nature is a fact, not an explanation.
This being so, the suppositions he made which hinged on religion were distinctly far-fetched and, at best, tangential. However, man has at last emerged from the darkness in which he was engulfed, and now, in the light of modern knowledge, it is possible for him to discard old, conjectural beliefs and arrive at the true nature of things by purely empirical methods. T.R. Miles writes:
It might be said that metaphysicians of the past have done something comparable to writing a cheque without adequate funds in the bank. They have used words without proper ‘cash’ to back them; they have been unable to give their words ‘cashvalue’ in terms of states of affairs. ‘The Absolute is incapable of evolution and progress’ is a grammatically correct sentence; but the words are like a dud cheque, and cannot be ‘cashed’.
All those phenomena, which were formerly attributed to supernatural forces, are now wholly explainable in terms of natural causes; modern thinking asserting that the 'discovery' of God was a mere assumption arising from ignorance. With the spread of knowledge, this belief has automatically disappeared. Julian Huxley writes:
Newton showed that God did not control the movements of the planets. Laplace in a famous aphorism affirmed that astronomy had no need of the god hypothesis; Darwin and Pasteur between them did the same for biology; and in our own century, the rise of scientific psychology and the extension of historical knowledge have removed gods to a position where they are no longer of value in interpreting human behaviour and cannot be supposed to control human history or interfere with human affairs.
Physics, psychology and history have proved conclusively that all those events which man explained in terms of the existence of a God or gods, or some abstract ‘Power’ had entirely different causes; but that man, steeped in ignorance, continued to speak of them in terms of religious mystery.
Nature does not explain; she is herself
in need of an explanation.
In the world of physics, Newton is one of the heroes of the scientific revolution. It was he who put forward the theory that the universe is bound by certain unchangeable principles, there being certain laws which govern the motion of all celestial bodies. Later, many other scholars carried this research forward to the point where all events on earth and in the heavens took place according to the immutable “Law of Nature”.
After this discovery, it was but natural that the concept of an active and omnipotent God as the power, which made things move appeared meaningless. At most, this discovery allowed for a God who had initially set the universe in motion. Therefore, Newton himself, along with other like-minded scientists, believed in God as the Prime Mover. Voltaire for his part, said that God had created the universe in just the same way as a watch-maker made a watch, assembling the parts, arranging them in a particular order, but afterwards having nothing to do with it. Hume subsequently, abolished this “inactive and worthless God” by advancing the argument that we had seen watches being made, but that since we had not seen the world in the process of creation, it was not possible for us to believe in God.
Atheists maintain that the progress of science and the expansion of knowledge had enabled man to observe events which were beyond his observation in the past. Being in the dark about the chain of events, we had not been in a position to understand isolated events. Now, equipped with knowledge, we no longer stand in awe of natural phenomena. For instance, the rising and setting of the sun are now understood as matters of common knowledge. But, in early times, these events seemed inexplicable, and man supposed that there must be a God who was responsible for them. This led to the acceptance of there being a supernatural power: he described whatever was beyond man’s knowledge as a miracle wrought by that power. But now that we know the rising and setting of the sun is the result of the earth’s revolving upon its axis, where is the need to believe that there is a God who makes the sun rise and set?
If science is to replace religion, it shall have to discover
the ultimate and absolute explanation.
Similarly, the functioning of all other things, which had been attributed to some invisible power, purported, according to modern studies, to result from the action and interaction of the natural forces now known to us. That is, after the revelation of natural causes, the need to posit, and to believe in the existence of God, or a supernatural force, vanished in and of itself. If the rainbow is merely a reflection of sunlight in minute droplets of water in the air, it is not, in any way, a sign placed in the sky by God. If the plague is inevitably an outbreak of this disease, it can no longer be looked on as a sign of divine wrath. If animals and plants have slowly evolved over hundreds of millions of years, there is no room for a ‘Creator’ of animals and plants, except in a metaphorical sense—quite different from that in which the word was originally and is now normally used. If hysteria and insanity are external symptoms of disordered minds, there is no place left in them for possession by devils. Citing such events in support of his argument, Julian Huxley observes with great conviction: “If events are due to natural causes, they are not due to supernatural causes.”
Who Created God?
Many scientists including Stephen Hawking have acknowledged that it is reasonable to ask who or what created the Universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of, who created God? Their argument is that, if we believe that the Universe was created by God—a Creator—then we must believe that God also has a Creator who must also have a Creator and so on. In this way there will be an endless series of Creators. Hence, isn’t it better to believe that this Universe came about without a Creator?
Summary of Arguments from Physical Sciences
God is an assumption arising from ignorance. All things formerly attributed to supernatural forces are now wholly explainable in terms of natural causes.
All events can be explained in terms of common natural laws deduced from observations and calculations without recourse to spirit, God or any form of absolute power.
If a universe can exist without a Creator, the existence of a Creator is also possible without a Creator.
Reality is only that which can stand up to tests of observation and experience. God is not an object of perception, and religion cannot be subjected to scientific analysis and proved. Therefore it is an unrealistic account of real events. i.e if events are due to natural causes they are not due to supernatural causes.
If God created the Universe, who created God?
Analysis of the Argument from Physical Sciences
Let us examine the argument which is based on research carried out in the field of the physical sciences, i.e. that studies of the universe have shown that whatever events take place do so in accordance with specific laws of nature.
This argument would have it that there is no necessity to assume the existence of an unknown God in order to explain these events, since known laws already exist to explain them. The best answer to this argument is the one given by a Christian theologian: ‘Nature is a fact, not an explanation’.
Physicists, of course, are right in saying that they have discovered the laws of nature, but what they have discovered is not, in essence, the answer to the problems for whose solution religion has come into existence. It is religion, which points towards the real causes of the creation of the universe, whereas the findings of physicists are confined to determining the outward structure of this universe, as it appears to exist before us.
What modern science tells us is only an elaboration upon, rather than an explanation of reality.
What modern science tells us is only an elaboration upon, rather than an explanation of reality. The entire body of modern scientific enquiry is concerned only with the question: ‘What is it that exists?’ The question: ‘Why does it exist?’ is far beyond its purview. Yet it is upon this second issue that we should be seeking enlightenment.
Eg: Digestion can now be explained as a chemical reaction under the control of enzymes but does not explain who determined such a reaction to take place with such control. The complexity of the various reactions and interactions to produce the digestive mechanism is so incredible that it is impossible to consider it an act of chance. It is only God who established these principles with the creation of life.
Eg: Rainfall — Science only gives more detailed information of the mechanism of rainfall but cannot ultimately tell us how or why these natural laws came into being, continue to exist and cause the universe to function with such precision.
The American biologist, Cecil Boyce Hamann, has this to say:
Where the mysteries of digestion and assimilation were seen as evidence of Divine intervention, they now are explained in terms of chemical reactions, each reaction under the control of an enzyme. But does it rule God out of His universe? Who determined that these reactions should take place, and that they should be so exactly controlled by the enzymes? One glance at a present-day chart of the various cyclic reactions and their interaction with each other rules out the possibility that this was just a chance relationship that happened to work. Perhaps here, more than any place else, man is learning that God works by principles that He established with the creation of life.
From this narrative, one can understand the actual value of modern discoveries. Science and technology having vastly increased the practicability and precision of human observation, it has been possible to deduce the natural laws that govern the universe and according to which it functions to perfection. For instance, in ancient times, man simply knew that drops of water fell out of the clouds on to the earth. But now the whole process of rainfall is widely understood, from the evaporation of sea-water to the precipitation of rain and the final journeying of the fresh water back to the sea. But the kind of understanding brought by these discoveries is nothing but the possession of more highly detailed information, which does not tell us ultimately why these physical processes take place. Science does not tell us how or why the laws of nature came into being, how or why they continue to exist or why they cause the earth and the heavens to function with such unfailing precision that, simply by observing them, it was possible to establish immutable scientific laws. The claim that by learning the laws of nature one could arrive at an explanation of the universe was a mere delusion. It provided an answer to the question, but it was an irrelevant one in that it accepted the intermediary physical links in the chain as primary causes. As Cecil Boyce Hamann so aptly says, ‘Nature does not explain; she is herself in need of an explanation’.
‘Intelligent design’ explains these similarities and
disparities amongst species in nature as
one of ‘common design’.
‘Why is blood red in colour?’ If you were to ask a doctor the reason, he would answer, ‘Because your blood contains millions of little red discs (5 million to each cubic centimeter), each some seven-thousandths of an inch in diameter, called the red corpuscles.
Yes, but why are these discs red?’
‘Because they contain a substance called haemoglobin, which, when it absorbs oxygen from the lungs, becomes bright red. That is why the blood in the arteries is scarlet. As it flows through the body, the blood gives up its oxygen to the organs of the body and the haemoglobin becomes brownish—this is the dark blood of the veins.’
Yes. But where do the red corpuscles with their haemoglobin come from?’
‘They are made in the spleen.’
‘That’s marvellous, Doctor. But tell me, how is it that the blood, the red corpuscles, the spleen, and the thousand other things are so organised into one coherent whole, work together so perfectly that I can breathe, run, speak, live?’
‘Ah! That is nature.’
‘Nature!’
‘When I say ‘‘nature”, I mean the interplay of blind physical and chemical forces.’
‘But, Doctor, why do these blind forces always act as if they were pursuing a definite end? How do they manage to coordinate their activities so as to produce a bird which flies, a fish which swims, and me…. who ask questions?’
‘My dear friend, I as a scientist, can tell you how these things happen. Do not ask me why they are like that.’
While there is no gainsaying the fact that science has set up for us a vast storehouse of knowledge, this dialogue clearly shows that it has its limits. There is a point beyond which it can offer no further explanations. Its discoveries then fall very far short of giving us the kind of answers provided by religion. Even if the quantum of scientific discoveries were increased by billions, the necessity for religion would in no way be obviated, for such discoveries throw light only on what is concrete and observable. They tell us what is happening. They do not provide answers to the question, ‘Why is it happening?’ and ‘What is the primary cause?’ All such discoveries are of an intermediate, subsidiary and non-absolute nature.
Atheist thinkers assert that the “discovery” of God is
a mere assumption arising from ignorance.
If science is to replace religion, it shall have to discover the ultimate and absolute explanation. Let us take the example of a machine which is functioning without our being able to see how it works, because it is enclosed in a metallic casing. When we remove this casing, we can see how the various cogwheels move in conjunction with a number of other parts of the mechanism. Does this mean that, in discovering the mechanics of the thing, we have truly understood the cause of its motion? Have we really grasped its secrets? And does the possession of knowledge about the functioning of a machine give us proof that it is self-manufacturing, self-replicating and is a perpetual motion machine? If the answer to this is ‘No’, then how do a few glances at the mechanism of the universe prove that this entire system came into existence unaided and of its own accord, and is continuing to function independently? Criticizing Darwinism, A. Harris made a similar remark: ‘Natural Selection may explain the survival of the fittest but cannot explain the arrival of the fittest'.
Many scientists of the present age have agreed upon the theory of evolution. This concept is becoming dominant in all scientific fields. An enchanting idol of spontaneous evolution has been set up in place of God. If the truth were told, the very dogma of organic evolution, from which all of the evolutionary concepts have been borrowed, is nothing but a hypothesis without any evidence. But this is not all. Some scientists have openly confessed that if they believe in the concept of evolution, it is simply because they can find no other alternative.
Those who believe in a universe without a Creator are not
ready to believe in a Creator without a Creator.
Unable to find an explanation for the similarities and disparities amongst species in nature, evolution or ‘common descent’ is professed as the answer. Sir Arthur Keith (1866-1955) said in 1953 that evolution was unproved and unprovable and that we believed in it only because the only alternative was special creation and that was unthinkable. Scientists are thus agreed upon the validity of the evolution theory simply because, if they discard it, they will be left with no option but to believe in the concept of God.
‘Intelligent design’ explains these similarities and disparities amongst species in nature as one of ‘common design’ where the same materials (genes) have been used to construct species but employed in such a way, as to generate radically different kinds of creatures.
Cressy Morrison asks with reason in his book, Man Does not Stand Alone, ‘How much must man advance before he fully realizes the existence of a Supreme Intelligence, grasps His goodness that we exist, assumes his full part in destiny and strives to live up to the highest code he is capable of understanding without attempting to analyse God’s motive, or describe His attributes?’
In the matter of theology the modern mind is in grave confusion. Atheist philosophers have frequently asked, “If God has created the Universe according to religious belief, who has created God?” But this question is totally illogical. It is sheer negation of logic. Furthermore, this objection is based on a clear contradiction. Those who believe in a universe without a Creator are not ready to believe in a Creator without a Creator. Therefore, if a universe can exist without a Creator, the existence of a Creator is also possible without a Creator.
Conclusion
Science is not an explanation of reality, it only elaborates upon nature. It is humanity’s attempt at interpreting nature. It is only concerned with the question: ‘What is it that exists?’ The question: ‘Why does it exist?’ is far beyond its purview. Yet it is upon this second issue that we should be seeking enlightenment. Nature is a fact, not an explanation. Nature does not explain, she is herself in need of an explanation.
Scientific arguments pertain only to the material and
physical world. In matters of the mind, soul, consciousness
and conscience, science does not have much to offer.
Scientists tell us what is happening. They do not provide answers to the question, ‘Why is it happening?’ and ‘What is the primary cause?’ There is a point beyond which it can offer no further explanations. Science upholds religious truths but cannot be expected to authenticate them.
Modern research relies on the inferential method of scientific arguments as opposed to science based on direct observation. Quantum mechanics, the nature of light, electron configuration are all examples of this method of argument. How then can the same method of argument be not accepted when applied to religion?
Scientific arguments pertain only to the material and physical world and phenomenon therein. In matters of the mind, soul, consciousness and conscience, science does not have much to offer..
Things are as they are. We cannot change the hard reality: we simply have to acknowledge it, accept it, bow to it. Now, if we are not to adopt an ostrich-like attitude, our best course is to believe in actuality, rather than deny it. By denying the truth, it is man who loses. His denial of the truth in no way alters, harms, or diminishes it. The truth is the truth. o
.....to be continued