Conversations Between an Atheist and a Theist - Thomas Uglow

First and foremost, it is worth determining who or what “God” really is. This is to forestall an inevitable retort to any Atheist theories proposed – that “the God that this article concerns is not one I believe in either”. This article does not concern an old man with a long white beard in the sky. That old man is as irrelevant as his beard is long in this Article. I’m talking of a God ideology, a God’s ideology, a supernatural being, an invisible force or energy, and all other things the word “God” may encompass.

Picture yourself as a human 5200 years ago, on the earth, in a very early form of a civilisation. Now, imagine the unexplained natural phenomena you would have witnessed back then. Lightning storms, Monsoons, perhaps even a solar eclipse or two. How would you go about trying to explain these happenings? You may have one or two ideas, but overall, they would most likely have been false and scientifically incorrect. This is when a God ideology comes in handy. A God, and particularly a God’s emotions can explain why certain rarities occur to us. For example, when somebody becomes sick due to an illness, it can be explained by the fact that he has done something to anger his God in some way, and his God has caused him to fall sick as a punishment. However, we can now say, due to our vast scientific advancements over those 5200 years, that God is not the reason behind many happenings we once thought he/she was.

The main argument against a God is that he is becoming less and less relevant in explaining the inner workings of the Earth, and the Universe, and so it seems like he is becoming less likely as we progress scientifically. We have science that answers the difficult questions nobody ever thought we would know the answers to. There may be questions now that we don’t ever expect to know the answers to, but it’s better to attempt those questions that to try fit a God ideology into the answer box. The idea of a God is convenient for people, as he/she is the universal answer to any tough question, but although it may be easier, it certainly isn’t always the right answer. For many years, people were content believing that all the planets revolved around the earth, as that was how God had designed the solar system. Until Copernicus suggested Heliocentrism, which we now know to be the truth. Science explains the world far better than a God ever could, and so now, it is God that needs explaining.

On the other hand, let’s consider how unlikely it is that human beings should have come into existence in the first place. Take the Earth for example. Its size is perfect. The Earth’s size and corresponding gravity holds a thin layer of mostly nitrogen and oxygen gases, only extending about 50 miles above the Earth’s surface. If Earth were smaller, an atmosphere would be impossible, like the planet Mercury. If Earth were larger, its atmosphere would contain free hydrogen, like Jupiter. Earth is one of the only planets equipped with an atmosphere of the right mixture of gases to sustain plant, animal and human life. But now we must ponder the unlikeliness of evolution leading to intelligent life (humans) on that planet. We must consider the phenomenally delicate combination of meiotic variations and genetic mutations that would lead over billions of years to a human being born. The combined chances of this happening are frighteningly small. Millions, if not Quadrillions to one. The chances that you personally should exist on Earth are 10 −2.7× 10 6 . Surely, the only explanation for the occurrence of the human species is that a God put us here.

The odds are too small for it to happen without guidance from an omniscient being. However, to this argument, an atheist could say that, it’s quite likely that intelligent life should form somewhere in the universe. In the milky way alone, there are 4 × 10 10 planets like earth that could potentially contain intelligent life, and that is only in our galaxy. When the Maths is done, it seems silly to think that we could be the only intelligent life in the universe, as there are so many planets for intelligent life to sprout, and so perhaps, we are not as special as we originally thought.

There exists a concept, called the Anthropic principle, and it states that in our case, the universe must be the way it is, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to question our own existence, as we wouldn’t exist. This means that a creator is not necessary, but the argument somewhat falls apart if the creator was intentionally trying to create life. The Anthropic principle attempts to discredit the argument from design and beauty, however the logic is somewhat circular, unless one accepts the multiverse theory.

The atheist could argue that a God cannot be proved, as there is no solid evidence for him/her. The theist could argue that the universe and the earth are so orderly and structured that they must have been designed. Only an omniscient being could have designed something so wonderful. The atheist might then say that modern science has showed us that many of the things in nature that were believed to have been designed are just products of extremely slow processes as evolution. Believe it or not, but your oldest ancestor is not Adam or Eve (using Christianity as an example) but is a small strand of DNA in a primeval soup of random chemicals in a humid and warm atmosphere. An experiment known as the Miller-Urey experiment simulated the conditions thought to be present on the early Earth (water, methane, ammonia, lightning), and in the resulting solution were found more than half of the amino acids which we know of today. These amino acids would go on to build incredibly complex organisms along with the help of thousands of other molecules over billions of years. The point is that a God is not required to make a human, you only need a few basic chemicals, some lightning, and a few billion years.

There is also the question of the cause of the universe. People of faith would argue that since everything needs a cause, so does the universe. The atheist would then ask what caused God, and what caused the cause, and so on. If God doesn’t need a cause, why would the universe? But why would God cause the creation of the universe anyway? What would be his/her reasoning behind creating such a thing, would it benefit him? Or perhaps is it that something other than God created the universe.

The theist could argue that evidence for a God lies within Ancient texts, like The Bible, The Quran, or The Torah. These texts claim to be realistic accounts of the past, and thus since these historical writings also claim that a God exists, then we can only assume that he/she does. The atheist could respond with the question: “Then why does God not appear to us anymore like he/she did in the past?”. These documents were written thousands of years ago, and they were most likely translated and re-translated many times, which led to a substantial accumulation of errors and mistranslations over time. Mistranslations are rarely ever good news. When DNA is incorrectly translated into mRNA it’s usually not the best. However, in the words of Dawkins: the scholars of the Septuagint can claim to have started something significant when they mistranslated the Hebrew word for “young woman” into the Greek word for “virgin”, producing the sentence: “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son. . . ”.

Albeit these texts contain good life lessons and morals to live by, they certainly don’t stand for much historical or factual basis. Therefore, we cannot claim that a God exists based upon ancient writings.

The question of the existence of a God is extremely difficult to answer and would take far longer than a single article to get close to the bottom of. As it stands, the universe is still largely a mystery to us, and for now, we cannot be sure whether a God does or doesn’t exist, since there are still many questions which science cannot yet answer. As Humans become more scientifically adept, and once we know more about the universe, it is likely that the answer will become clearer to us and perhaps the question will finally be answered.