98. God. Part two

 

               After the creation of universe it is running on its own, by the laws of nature. Everything that happens, happens, because of the law of cause and effect. It is an everyday observation. No Divine force, tangibly, intervenes. If one wants to buy a loaf of bread, one has to go to a shop and buy it. No angel from heaven will do it for him. If one falls sick from malaria, he must have been bitten by an Anopheles mosquito carrying Plasmodium parasite. If one is hit by a car while walking on a footpath, it must be due to the carelessness of the driver or a faulty vehicle. An Olympic athlete succeeds where others don’t, because his body is better suited for that sport and he has worked very hard to develop that talent.

So, you see, there is no evidence, that there is no God. If nobody has seen God or talked to God, that does not mean He does not exist. He simply does not want to talk, and maybe He cannot be seen ; He is faceless.

               The second argument, that the world is full of injustice and miseries, does not mean there is no God, He simply chose not to interfere in human affairs. All the miseries are man- made

             The third argument, that everything that happens, happens, due to law of cause and effect, there is no Divine intervention at any point. Off course it is correct, because God made it so. May be it is some sort of experiment of His; He created the universe, He also formulated the fundamental laws of nature, and then left it on its own , to see how it develop             .

How to prove a negative? All we have is that because such and such thing(s) did not happen, which we think should have happened, were there a God, therefore, there is no God

               After dealing with the arguments against God, let us discuss the impact of Copernicus and Darwin on human thought. No other two individuals had as much impact on our perception of man’s place in the universe as these two.

               Copernicus published his work, in 1543, the year he died. Kepler, Galileo, and Newton further developed the Copernican theory. Kepler wrote the three laws of planetary motion, by which the planets move.  Newton discovered his three laws of motion which operate in the whole universe and explain the movement of all bodies. What is the importance of Copernican theory? To understand it one must study the human thought before and after Copernican theory

               For thousands of years, human beings saw a flat, stationary earth. Earth stayed in one place, whereas the sky revolved around it. Sun and moon rose in the East and set in the West. Stars filled the sky and even they moved during the night. Man was the most powerful of all the creatures.  Everything moved with clock-like precision, like a nicely crafted watch. Can a watch construct itself, without a watch maker? If a watch, a house, cannot develop by itself, there had to be a creator, which made this grand universe. Everything pointed towards the earth as the center of the universe, and a Creator of this universe, the God. Religions taught the same thing, with the added twist that the man was the center of the universe, created by the God in His image, and he was the designated ruler of the world and its creatures, as His assistant. Plants were for him, animals were for his use, sun was provided for light and heat, rain for his harvest. Earth was not very old, may be few thousand years old. This is called geocentric (earth is the center) theory. It was the accepted truth from the time of antiquity to 16^th century (with few dissenters, like Aristarchus of Samoa)

               Copernican theory gave a heliocentric (sun is the center) concept. Earth was not stationary but moved, on itself, and around sun. Other planets in the solar system did the same. If one could go far away, the earth would appear as a pinhead of light, hardly visible, amongst thousands of other stars. How could it be the center of the universe? All these millions (in fact, billions) of stars could not have been made for the sake of earth, and for the convenience of its inhabitants (most important was man)

               Whereas Copernican theory diminished the importance of earth and man, it did not diminish the importance of God. Universe could not have emerged by itself, somebody must have made it. Every creation, be it a plant, an animal, a human, or a heavenly body, had thousands upon thousands of components, each working in a precise and prescribed way, as if a higher force, laid down the laws of their governance. Everything, for a thinking man, was a source of joy and wonder. A far far wiser and powerful entity, alone, was capable of such achievement. Without God, universe could not have come into existence. There was an essential need for the presence of God to explain this puzzle.

              

To be continued

 

97. God. Part one

I have thought about God for several decades. It has been my obsession in life

Do I have the answers to all my questions about God which had perplexed me for all of my adult life? Yes, almost.

Can I convince others, who don’t believe in God, the presence of God? No, I cannot.

You might think that the reason I cannot convince others, is because there is no objective evidence. That is not the reason. The reason is that the evidence is anecdotal. You know how scientific community hates anecdotal evidence. I, myself, have been involved in bench research on cell biology for 6-7 years; therefore, I understand the limitations of preliminary evidence. This type of data by itself is not definitive but becomes the basis for further research. One tries to get experimental evidence, by designing experiments in a laboratory which prove or disprove the hypothesis. If it is clinical evidence, one may, finally, have to do a randomized clinical trial with at least two almost similar arms in a significant number of humans, in which one arms gets a treatment, while other does not. If the treatment arm derives statistical benefit, then the hypothesis is tentatively right. If multiple observers, away from each other in time and space, repeat the experiment, and have the same results, then science accepts it as a fact. If there is enough circumstantial evidence (facts), one tries to discover the laws of nature, which tie the facts. Once one has discovered the laws, one tries to formulate a theory (or hypothesis) which explains the laws.

What I have described above is the scientific method. Conclusions are reached, based on the facts, wherever facts lead one. One starts with a presumption, but if the experiments prove it wrong, one has to abandon it, and reach a different conclusion, based on the new data.  One does not start with a preconceived conclusion. In contrast, the religion, starts with predetermined conclusions, and finds the facts which support its views, and discards the facts which do not support it. This ‘pick and choose’ method of data-collecting is completely and utterly unacceptable to science. Anecdotal evidence picks and chooses, selecting only those anecdotes which support a particular point of view, instead of picking all anecdotes.

The trouble is that with God, you cannot get evidence by designing experiments. The evidence against God is zero; one cannot prove by science or logic that there is no God. The evidence in support of God is miniscule, like the proverbial needle in the haystack, and indirect.

You might ask that if the evidence supporting God is so little, why do billions of human being (more than half of world population) believe in God. The answer is twofold; faith and the law of inertia. Faith is a fundamental part of all religions, one is told not to question the dictates of religion but accept them on faith. The law of inertia hates and resists change: as Newton said “a body in motion will stay in motion, and a body at rest will stay in rest, for ever, provided a force acts on it…………………………………” We are intellectually lazy people; we tend to follow the religious practices of our parents.

Let us, briefly, state, the case against the existence of God

One has four facts in front of him:

1. Nobody has seen God in, at least, the last two thousand years

2. Nobody has talked to God in, at least, the last two thousand years

3. World is full of miseries, and injustice.

4. Every event that occurs, is the result of the law of cause and effect

Let me expound; I have chosen two thousand years (I could have chosen an earlier date), because we have relatively better recorded history of this period. If God had come in open so that people had seen Him and heard His voice, somebody would have written about it and told it to his children and grand children, who in turn would have passed it on to next generations.

History of the last two thousand years is characterized by wars, famines, hunger, diseases, poverty, and natural catastrophes (floods, hurricanes, epidemics, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc). Furthermore, there is injustice to contend with. Powerful have been oppressing the weak. People do good things and bad things. Cruel or bad persons are not necessarily punished; in fact they may have a great life, and the good are not necessarily rewarded . Where is the omnipotent and justice-loving God? Either there is no God, or He is not all- powerful, or He does not care. Years ago I had read that a thinker had said that only two (any two) of the following three propositions can be correct, not all three:

               God is all good

               God is all powerful

               World is full of suffering.

If first two are correct, then our suffering may not be suffering to the Eternal and Infinite Eye, just as I do not care about the death of dozens of billions of RBC’s every day (blog 95)

              

To be continued

 

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