A brief and summarized version of the previous article to make it easier for people to understand how to respond to common Atheist contentions.

1)‘We can’t just assume a Creator exists just like that! We need scientific evidence!’

The point to understand is that the argument for the Creator is not a scientific one, but a rational one based on understanding the cause and effect of limited things. Science as a branch of study is:

limited in its scope – it deals only with tangible reality. For example, it cannot measure morals or emotions. Also, questions such as ‘Does God Exist’ are outside the scope of science.

time-bound – It is limited to a certain time frame. For example, in 1960’s, the universe was considered to have no beginning and no end. Then until recently, the Big Bang theory was held in high esteem and now there are scientists who argue there is new evidence which refutes it. So a theory keeps changing in light of new evidence.

not a method of inquiry that gives absolute certainties. It deals with ‘how’ the phenomena around us work rather than ‘why’ they work in first place. It involves a process of moving from observing a specific reality to generalizations which at best only gives estimates of how likely a theory holds true, hence containing room for error and bias.Therefore, science has a scope and should be used in its proper areas (medicine, technology, etc.), however it has limitations to its scope which makes it irrational to use for questions which are beyond the scientific method and it certainly has no place in answering or proving the existence of an unseen omnipotent Creator that is beyond time and space.

2) ‘The Belief in a God is just blind faith. There is nothing rational or intellectual about it. Most people who believe in God only do so because of their upbringing via their parents or society. Religion is ingrained in their minds and not through reason and thinking’

Firstly, blind belief is prevalent in many cultures/religions/worldviews including atheism and not necessarily a feature of religions. In fact, the basis of atheism and secularism was founded upon blind belief. Secularism, for instance, was borne out of a clash between the Church and state in 18th century Europe, where any person who held any view that was contrary to religion was deemed heretic and was persecuted. The authority of the state was not to be questioned as it was granted by God. Therefore thinkers called for the scientific method of inquiry as a more rational method, using it to challenge the authority of the Church’s religion that they saw it as blind and based on imitation.

This gave way to an emotional reaction causing 2 kinds of blind belief:

1) Those who ascribed to the scientific method adopted ‘scientism’ which is the view that science alone can find all truths. They reduced science to only material knowledge – that which can be observed and touched and have overstepped the boundaries of science itself when most of these assumptions cannot be proven scientifically.

2) Secondly is the blind belief that organized religion should not play a role in public life. It should be divorced from the political and social sphere and should be confined to one’s own private capacity. Instead, secular ethics and morals will shape public life and morality should be personal so that each person can decide morals for him/herself.

It is because of such social and cultural norms in society do you find a lot of people are ‘non-religious’. So blind belief is equally found in secular societies and not a feature of religions.

3)‘The case for a Creator is like a flying spaghetti monster or a mermaid, it’s one of those things you just can’t disprove it’

Any existence is recognized by its attributes. This could be determined either directly using our senses or inferred using cause and effect. For flying spaghetti monster to exist means it has to have closely matching attributes of yellowish spaghetti like figure which only tells us it is finite and limited. Now the question really is that is there any evidence of a flying spaghetti monster hovering in the air? Or is there any effect that we have sensed which helps us trace it back to an entity that has spaghetti-like figure? No. A mermaid is no different.

Now how is a Creator different to a flying spaghetti monster or a mermaid? We know the Creator is different because firstly we are not assigning attributes of creation to it in which case there needs to be direct sense experience, but we are making the point that there is a Cause for this effect (the universe) and this Cause must be a transcendental Entity. For example, how do you know that your great great great great great great great great great great grandfather existed? You don’t have any documents nor can you test it scientifically nor do you have his grave. You only know by inferring that because you exist today, he must have existed as well. You don’t know how he looked, whether he was tall or short, had blue eyes or black, had hair or not or how he was as a person, you only know that he existed.

4)‘Causality only takes place within space and time. So to assume the cause of the universe is a transcendental Being i.e. one who is beyond the constraints of time and space is a logical fallacy’.

This contention is a logical fallacy as it assumes that causality only takes place within space and time and so a Cause outside space and time would be irrational. Take the universe, for example, if we are saying there is no cause independent of time and space (the Creator), it would imply the universe created itself or just ‘popped’ into existence. Both of these scenarios escape our intuition and common sense. But the limits of the universe beg the question ‘What gave it those limits?’ Rather, the creation of the Creator enters space and time so the question of What caused the universe still holds valid.

5)‘We can’t use our simple everyday notions of cause and effect to conclude that a Creator exists. Science changes our notions of what is common sense and discovers things what we previously believed to be false to be true. Thus we need to measure more of the universe before saying it is created and requires a cause’

Actually, science relies on human intuition including the principle of cause-and-effect to conduct and read experiments, measure readings and make conclusions out of it. For any scientist to carry out an experiment, he or she starts with a hypothesis for which the required apparatus is designed to observe the limited set of variables to form a theory which is then generalized. The fact that a hypothesis is needed shows that previous information is needed that is built upon intuition. These include rational truths such as ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ and ‘a limited thing cannot come from nothing’- something we use in our everyday lives.

In fact, in an interesting BBC documentary called ‘What came before the Big Bang?’, scientists actually have reasoned that the big bang itself cannot be the explanation of the universe (as it implies it came from nothing). Instead, they reasoned that there must be something pre-existing to it which has initiated the big bang explosion. In other words, they use cause and effect and human intuition to conclude that there has to be something prior to the universe which has caused it and this they have reasoned without having any ‘scientific evidence’ for the cause of the Big Bang. However, they have come to various theories such as eternal inflation, M-theory, the big crunch, and so on. In other words, they are going around in circles by saying that there is an infinite chain of limited things which was addressed and refuted in the article.

6) ‘The Universe is so vast it is pretty much endless. There are various theories on how there may be an infinite number of universes and thus eternal’

Let’s start with an example. Say you have an infinite number of your favorite box of chocolates. Split the box of chocolates into two…what are you left with? You’re left with an infinite amount of chocolates (infinite divided by two still equals infinity). Then consider taking nine chocolates out of one of the halves…what are you left with now? It is still an infinite number of chocolates (infinity minus nine gives you infinity). Now take one out of the nine chocolates…is it still infinite? Yes, it is. Does it make sense? No.

Now apply this example to the universe consisting of billions and billions of galaxies, each galaxy including our Milky Way Galaxy consisting of billions of stars, one which has more than 9 planets orbiting it, does it now make it infinite? No. As mentioned in the article, the concept of infinity would imply it is beyond space and time. This, in very simple terms, means that the distance between any two points on Earth would not be a finite number but an infinite one. In fact, there is no ‘scientific evidence’ to confirm that infinity can exist in the real finite world. Have scientists actually discovered an infinite amount of atoms?

So it is not that a limited and finite set of things can equal infinity, rather the Cause of these limited and finite things must be infinite and independent.

7) ‘Fine, there is a cause for the universe, but it is not a transcendental or sentient Being such as the Creator or God, rather it is something physical or mechanical. Einstein’s theory of relativity (E=MC2) which states that energy can’t be created nor destroyed but changed from one form to another is one contender. This energy is infinite and thus the cause of the universe’.

If such a contention is put forward, then the questioner agrees that the universe is the sum of all limited, finite and dependent things which requires a cause external to it to bring it into existence. Now the question is what is the nature of this Cause? Can it be limited or infinite? The theory of relativity (E=MC2) is actually limited by its equation and definition. It states that energy is limited by mass (m) and speed of light (c) squared. If it is limited by definition, then how can it be infinite? It is not infinite.

Rather the assumption being made is that all observable phenomena are mechanical (can be explained to be machine-like objects) or materialistic (can be explained to be forms of physical matter). Science is the field of inquiry that studies finite and limited things. So if hundred years from now, a new scientific theory is proposed by physicists to be the cause of the whole universe (which would only be refuted by later evidence), then that ‘Cause’ has to be limited and originated by a Cause as well. What needs to be understood is that the Cause of the universe cannot be limited and finite and hence transcends scientific observations and explanations.

8) ‘If everything has a cause then what caused the Creator?’

This question is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, the Creator itself as explained in the article has to transcend all physical laws and we know there simply just has to have a cause because the universe could not have appeared out of chance. Secondly, we have already discussed the problem of an infinite chain of causality in the article. If the chain of causality went on forever, then nothing would exist. The argument essentially is that everything finite and limited has a Cause and not everything has a cause. We could always ask who created the creator which created the creator which created the creator that created – and you find yourself going around in circles.

What is most troubling for the atheists/agnostics/skeptics is that their views are purely naturalistic and empirical. So they imagine this infinite cause to resemble like us and then find it troubling to understand how this cause is infinite. The case is that we cannot, from our limited human mind, rationalize how the Creator exists in the infinite realm. The limited mind cannot understand the nature of the unlimited Cause. All we can know (and reason) is that this cause must be infinite, unlimited, and independent.

9)‘Hang on, how do we know the Creator is one and not many?’

We know that there is only one Creator and not many by understanding the concept of finite and limited. We know that the universe is finite, limited and dependent upon a Cause. This cause must be infinite, unlimited and Independent. Now if perhaps there were indeed other creators, say ten, none would have absolute omnipotence and authority. You may think why should that be a problem? This is a problem because if each creator had a shared control or authority over the universe, then no one creator can exercise absolute power and omnipotence thereby making each limited and restricted. If it is restricted then it is not truly independent and thus dependent on others.

This means that pagan mythologies such as the Ancient Greeks or Norse mythology which believed in various gods and goddesses, each having power in a specific area, is irrational as each so-called ‘god’ would be finite giving it a limited amount of power. The Cause of the creator can only be one as only one can be truly infinite, unlimited and independent from its creation. Rather, if there were indeed many limited creators (i.e. one for fire, one for water, one for land, etc.) there would have been chaos and disunity in the universe instead of complete harmony and order.

10) ‘The problem of evil in the world shows how a Creator who is good and loving cannot exist. If He allows evil to exist then he is not God, and if he is purely good and loving and cannot stop evil then he is not All-Powerful, either way, he doesn’t exist’.

This is an emotional contention rather than an intellectual one.

Firstly there is a hidden assumption that God is just good (Loving, Merciful, Compassionate) and All-Powerful so if God’s actions do not represent these 2 attributes, then He is not God. But there are other attributes of God. In Islam, Allah is depicted as ‘The Wise’, ‘The All-Knowing’ and ‘The Just’ and so on. This obviously means that God has wisdom and knowledge of why a seemingly ‘tragic’ event may have good and benefit from it. More importantly, we human beings impose our own arbitrary definitions of what is good and bad upon God. So for example, someone loses a job and feels depressed only to find that a better job awaits for him in the future.

Secondly, such painful experiences and events do not disprove the existence of a Creator, but rather it proves that there is a Cause behind such events and incidents. The question that should be asked however is ‘Why does a Creator allow such things to happen?’ The reality of suffering, trials, and difficulties are part of the overall purpose of life, which is to test how each person best remains conscious of God in both ease and difficulty.

The purpose and wisdom dictate that God is known through tests and suffering because man by nature is not self-sufficient but dependent upon his creator. In view of our purpose, an event is only ‘bad’ if it distances you away from God and ‘good’ is what makes you closer to God.

For more detailed responses to these contentions, please click here.

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