“Decimating God In 5 Questions”: Part One
Hi! Welcome to the first part of “Decimating God in 5 Questions”. In this series of articles, I will take all the questions I can find on Atheism and answer them. You can also drop your unique questions in the comment section; I would be happy to answer them as well.
Well, this is going to be one hell of a ride filled with three distinct things: arguments, arguments, and arguments. So strap in your seatbelts, and let’s start; Yeeeee hawwww…
Q1. If atheists don’t believe in a God-given purpose of life, then what is the meaning of life according to them?
Well, let’s see. What do you think is the meaning of life for a rat, or what do you think is the meaning of life for a dog, or what do you think is the meaning of life for an elephant? It’s nothing. There is no meaning at all. Basically, their lives are just running on a “live until you die” principle. There is no God-given purpose in their life. So is the case with all other millions of species inhabiting this Earth.
Now, wouldn’t it be egotistical to assume that, although no other species on the planet have a purpose, humans were specially created by God and given a unique “purpose of life” from above? The harsh truth is: there is no purpose in the life of a human being. We came into existence just by a mere chance of evolution, and now that we have a life, we have to live it. We were not created by any creator with a unique purpose in mind.
Although, after realizing the above truth, we can give our life a purpose– whatever it might be. Achieve your goals in life, give yourself and your family a beautiful future, help those in need, and make life better for others as well, etc. Now, are these purposes not more attractive and practical rather than searching for a God-given purpose and giving in to blind faith and superstitions?
Q2. Can science answer everything? If not, then isn’t that where God comes into the picture?
No, science can’t. And thanks to Godel’s incompleteness theorem, which proved that everything could never be answered and there will always be something unknown left irrespective of how hard one tries, it’s also no fun trying. So unlike religion, which can basically answer every question just by saying, “God made it so,” science can’t. But many people in the science fraternity have dedicated their entire lives to finding the answers to the remaining questions, and we can be sure that whatever questions remain unanswered today will be answered one day with certainty and conviction. In fact, with time, science has responded to many questions for which the only religious answer was “God made it so.” Be it simple questions, such as rain, lightning, fire, or growth of plants, or complex ones, such as gravitational fields, magnetic fields, time and space, etc. And with time, this list will continue to increase.
So I leave it to you- What would you like to do with the remaining questions? Would you wait to find a logic and reasoning-based answer for them, or will you believe the story about a higher being and put them in the “God made it so” basket?
Q3. How do you know there is no god?
This is a clever question. To answer this, allow me to take one more similar question- How do you know there are no unicorns? Now to scientifically prove that neither God nor unicorns exist, there is only one way– search every inch of the universe, and only if you don’t find any of the two can you indeed claim that both don’t exist. Now we all know that such a search is impossible. As a result, it can never be said with one hundred percent certainty that God and unicorns don’t exist. What can be said is only the probability of their existence.
Let’s focus on God for a while and let the unicorns fly away. So instead of asking, “How do you know there is no God?” what if we ask, “How do you know there is a God?” After all, it would be interesting to ask for the evidence of God.
From a scientific point of view, the evidence for God is very vague. We get the earliest description of God from religious texts, written at a time when the percentage of the literate population was almost null. And even the very few people that were literate had much less understanding of the world and scientific phenomena than today. Hence the credibility of these texts is highly questionable. And apart from these texts, there is no other evidence of God in real life. We discussed in the earlier question how science answers most of today’s questions, and even the questions that still need to be answered will be answered at some point. Hence there is no need to ponder upon the vague concept of God in day-to-day life.
So we saw how the evidence for the existence of God is feeble. As a result, the probability of his presence is infinitesimally tiny. In fact, unicorns happen to have a slightly higher possibility of existence than God :)
Q4. Can there be morality without God?
Why not? It’s not like God is the only source of morality. Morality is one of the fundamental attributes in the lives of humans and all living beings. Every being understands what is right and wrong, what it should do and shouldn’t. For example- Our dogs have morality. They have attributes such as loyalty, friendliness, compassion, sympathy, etc. And what gods do they worship- el chupadogra? No, they don’t.
Morality is programmed within all beings through evolution, and it is a necessary quality for survival. An immoral being would have lots of trouble blending with society.
I will accept that religious texts teach us a lot about morality and goodwill, but all such texts do is enhance these qualities. It is not as if morality was earlier absent in humanity and came into existence only through such texts.
Q5. All living beings are made up of atoms and molecules. Atoms and molecules themselves are non-living things. Hence, how can living beings be made out of non-living things without an external intervention such as God?
Yes, I saved the best for last. So basically, this question is asking: How did living beings come into existence? Now as we discussed in question 2, “Can science answer everything,” there are a lot of questions that science is yet to answer, and as per Godel’s incompleteness theorem, there will always be lots of questions that science can’t yet answer. The question about living beings also happens to be one of them. There is no concrete explanation for how life started; there are just various hypotheses. Researchers are trying their best to come up with a solution, and they are also getting closer with time, but as it turns out, a lot of work still needs to be done. We will surely get a solution, but what we require is time.
It is impractical to introduce God as an answer for every question science has yet to answer. Many questions for which the earlier answer was “God made it so” were re-answered by science with conviction over time, proving the religious explanation wrong in many cases. “The theory of evolution” is one of the best examples of such a scientific explanation. Before 1859, the most accepted answers to the question “How organisms came into being?” were religious ones, that God created each organism, including humans, in a pair of two, male and female, and they, in turn, populated the Earth. This was the simple explanation that most religions gave to their followers. But the theory of evolution proved that such an explanation was nothing more than a “poor guess” and re-answered the question with its actual reason.
So if you still need convincing and would like to believe in the religious explanation of questions only, then good luck with that. But remember that your belief will undoubtedly be proved wrong someday.
So with this last question, we have reached the end of this article. Remember to ask your unique questions in the comment box; I would happily answer them in the upcoming parts of “Decimating God in 5 Questions.”
Thank you for reading!
