So You Tell Me There's No God?

"The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has

no watch-maker".

The above quotation, is not a mere phrase by the famous French writer and philosopher, Voltaire, but it is an evergreen logic, beautiful and sensible, that’s brought to the table every so often – whenever the waves of skepticism rise. Since the advent of intelligent life on earth, the world has witnessed many intellectual wars proving and disproving the existence of the watch-maker, someone who created the intellect with which we question this someone’s existence in the first place, if there is a watch, there has to be a watch-maker, and if there is intellect, there is someone behind it – but whoever is behind our intellect, is most surely also beyond our intellect – and that’s where all the nuisance starts. Everyone has an opinion about god, and everyone is busy publicizing it. Monotheism, polytheism, deism, agnosticism, atheism, creationism, darwinism and all kinds of isms are under constant battle with each other. Then there are the religions, each of them having a different name for their god, each of them declaring their path as the righteous one, followers of all kinds of deities fighting to get their deity its rightful throne among all. What’s more unfortunate is that there does not seem to be an end to it. However, the question of choosing the right god comes later, what matters beforehand, is that whether there is a god or not ?

If the world around us would have been full of amorphous structures and unnecessary blobs of matter, useless pieces of chunk and inexplorable tiny blocks, if the laws of nature lacked rationality, and mathematics had no implications in the universe either, if art meant only the abstract one, and an atom under microscope would reveal only blurred surface of a globule that has nothing essential inside.. Even in such a horrid world it won’t be utterly justified to proclaim that no one caused it to exist, then how can we fancy that this world, in which everything is serving a purpose, from the rotating electrons to the stars shining in the heavens. All objects in nature work like the parts of a great machinery; all interconnected and compulsory for the fine working of the machine. Everything in nature serves its purpose through Correlation and Linkage; everything is linked and this interlinked compliance of the universal components serves as a crucial logical proof which negates the notion that none happens to have built this machine. This linkage is like the combination of key and lock, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The perfection with which the keys in universe fit in their locks and the precision with which parts of the universe fit each other is enough evidence to defy all possibilities of random creation.

One simple example of interlinked mechanism is ‘eating’. Our mouth is made to gulp down food; for this reason we have teeth and tongue inside the mouth, an alimentary canal situated below to transport food to the stomach, intestines to process and store the food, valves to close the lid of stomach while food is being processed, gastric juices to digest the food, cells in the body that turn food into energy, etc. The question is, if nobody had wanted this food to make it through our mouth, why is it that in the journey from mouth to the body, every organ assisted the process of food intake as if it was made to do this and only this. The perfect manner in which every piece completes this picture is a sheer demonstration of purposeful creation by someone highly Intelligent and Magnificent. All one needs is to think in terms of pure logic, because logic is a universal standard system of formulae and equations which remains same for all the humans belonging to any era, nationality, race, religion, ethnicity or bearing any other individual differences; as long as they’re human – they can always understand the language of logic. Philosophers can come forward with different philosophies, but logic is same for any logician. In science, new theories are always being introduced, and the old ones are being turned aside, but in the science of logic there is no inventing a new one or rejecting the known ones. Logic is absolute, self-evident and it is everywhere, just like the Creator Himself, and therefore, it is a great tool to unravel the futility of arguments against the existence of a supreme authority.

The logic behind the idea of an all powerful creator is so blatant and incredibly apparent that one wonders why is it even being questioned, why are there sane people ignoring this very bright and clear logic? but there are people who in pursuit of thinking outside the box wish to challenge all that is intangible; they discard the idea of a god since it cannot be felt by the senses. In 2000 BC men used to oppose the idea of a creator arguing that they cannot see, hear or feel him – and here we are today, in the 2nd millennium, refuting the idea of god because we can’t see, hear or feel him. Apparently, even after exploring the insides of living cells science didn’t bring us closer to a creator but took us further away. Studying an immaterial powerful being who caused the universe to exist out of nowhere is way beyond the mental grasp of science and a subject totally out of the scope and sphere of science. Yet, scientists feel confident enough to declare the non-existence of any Supreme Being. Science-lovers have always hoped for a god that can be observed and experimented upon in the most sophisticated of laboratories, or maybe they look for some kind of a tag bearing god’s name when they delve into the depths of a living cell, exploring every nanometer of it. The mere existence of these cells and their excellent design is not sufficient for them to accept that someone purposefully made it. Even the discovery of the genetic code at the core of the human cell; seeing a chemical language holding instructions for the human body did not affect scientists to see the hand of God or intelligent design/programming, when a sane mind wonders: What else is a tag if not this ? Alas, but alas. Methods of science do not allow it to accept the existence of something that does not have a physical presence, which is fair and may be necessary for the flourishment of science itself – but does that mean humans should also stop believing in anything that is non-physical ?

If the creator had given only the five known sense organs to humans, they could be justified in not believing anything that exists beyond their sensory approach but humans were also given a rational mind, a mind that can discover and invent with the help of logic, reasoning and remembering. How was the force of gravity discovered ? Was it discovered because Newton’s eyes merely saw an apple falling down the tree or was it because Newton simply applied logic to what he saw and thought that there must be a force which compels the apple to fall down. Some phenomena are so familiar to us that we forget that there must be a logic behind them and that’s exactly the case with nature. When flowers blossom and trees grow high, when rain pours down and clouds thunder, few of us stop and ponder as to who designed this beautiful stage with such purposeful artistry. We are more contented and absorbed in picking up the apple and eating it then to go worrying about the force which made it fall down. Yet, what surprises me more are the well-educated people for whom the water cycle of earth is the only explanation for rainfall- they triumph at proving that some god does not send water down from sky! and with that they also prove that they are actually expecting the hand of god to be literally involved in squeezing clouds to shower rain. It is similar to expecting the watch-maker’s hand literally pushing down the needles of the watch in order to make it work. We fail to comprehend that one can never find the watch-maker inside the watch, yet every part of the watch bears testimony to him. We have evolutionists who believe that since it was the early climatic conditions of the earth which brought together several chemical bases that constituted the DNA of the earliest species(by chance), therefore, they conclude, that there is no god behind the creation of life.

With ever new theories, gods of science are busy refuting the possibility of a creator but all their efforts are vain attempts of finding the watch-maker inside the watch, and when they fail to do so, they declare there was no one who made the watch. Once they denied that, they consequently had to come up with various theories of how the watch came into being, like how about ‘it existed out of itself’ or ‘was a child of coincidence’, even though both of these theories are lame to the core but are so articulately and cunningly expressed that a vast majority of people today are embracing the sensibility of the idea that there is no watch-maker of the watch we live in. Having faith in God in today’s world means to be uneducated and unaware of the modern discoveries, having belief in a purpose-oriented universe means that you belong to the third world.. but just because people embarrass us, shall we embrace the nightmare that there is no Creator? What should embarrass us more, is this huge spectacular monument of a universe in our face – which leaves absolutely no space for us to be skeptical.

Man of today has explored the depths of oceans and heights of skies, man has reached moon, man is trying to conquer mars, man has discovered so much about God’s beautiful artwork than he had ever known, yet, he does not want to accredit this work to some supernatural being. He does not want to admit how small he is in front of the vast universe. He is the discoverer of stars, planets and quasars, he is the one who discovered gravitation, space-time fabrication, cure to fatal diseases, vaccines for deadly viruses – man is saving hundreds of lives, man is controlling natural catastrophes, man is preserving wildlife, man is on a mission to save the planet from global warming and radiation hazards, man thinks that there’s no one else but man himself who looks after the small universe of his own. So, to him, his reaction is almost justified towards faithful folks who worship an imaginary being and thank their imaginary lords for the favors man bestowed upon them. He wonders why can’t they act more wise like the tribesmen of stone-age who would worship the man who discovered fire, and not some ‘unknown being‘ who created fire in the first place.

Popular books and magazines, most watched TV channels, respected institutions, top-most universities of the world and trusted science journals, all recommend their audience to stop believing in things that do not exist, things like ghosts, UFOs and gods. Like the magnates of fashion industry, they have created a fashion trend which people will end up following no matter how unpleasant or uncomfortable it might be. The idea, is that, no one likes to go to a party wearing out-of-fashion clothes. Adorning oneself with the jewel of faith in the modern world, is close to wearing pyjamas or nightgown to a wedding party. Here is the choice we have to make; wear what would please others, or wear what we feel right. People lovingly acknowledge the name of the designer who they’re wearing, and that is the right thing to do. Just like wearing original Levi’s is a reason to show-off, living in the world designed by the Greatest Designer of all – should be a cause of pride, not of shame.

We all have been given brains of our own, therefore, no one should tell us what to think. But first and foremost, we should think at all because nothing can be more destructive to the mind than blind beliefs. Having blind faith means that the doors which might lead to the truth have now been closed. Blindness is injurious to the body and soul, be it in love, life or faith. Why choose to be blind when you have got the eyes ? Shouldn’t we question every concept before making it a belief ? Everyone, and practically everyone has pondered on the possibility of the existence of a creator once in his lifetime.

There are three kinds of people in the world: Those who understand the importance of these issues and try to solve them through their knowledge and reasoning and after thorough contemplation decide whether they should accept or reject the idea of a god.

On the other hand we have those people who know deep down what reality is, they understand that it’s not possible for anything to sprang out of utter non-existence into something that’s astonishingly intelligent and awe-inspiring but due to their pampered ego and for the love of submitting to their futile whims they choose not to surrender and rebel against their conscience.

Then there are those who opt for being indifferent to these thoughts and enjoy life as it is; without the burden of such mysteries to solve which they think wouldn’t hurt if they remain unsolved. A vast majority belongs to this group, these are the people who don’t bother their intellects to go near anything that involves ‘thinking‘ and does not have a material significance, these are the people who are always willing to follow whoever and whatever seems powerful or attractive to them, like iron-fillings they are attracted to any magnet that’s within their reach, they try to keep their minds away from haunting thoughts like those of God, death, judgement and punishment, even though in the general populace their names are attached with the label of some respected religion. They, are precisely the people who follow religion blindly, who choose not to reason, and therefore abandon ‘reason’ if it goes out of fashion.

The one thing we all must know is that necessities never go out of fashion, and reasoning is a necessity. We may enter the third millennium and find ourselves among the same godlessness, proclaiming that we can’t see, hear or feel god. The truth is that we never will – the only way to know that there is a God up there is through the ultimate power of reasoning bestowed upon man, otherwise our eyes have been watching apples fall since the day we stepped on earth. How much more is it going to take before we unanimously agree to the logic that there must be a Force which brought forth this apple orchard! That there must be, a God.

And thus I’d like to conclude with the words of William Drummond, hoping that one day we will all be able to free our intellects from the chains of desire, fear and norms.

"He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who

dares not, is a slave".*

*The above article was a university level essay assignment which had to begin and end with the given quotes.