Debate on "Now, do we need God?"

A few readers on Times of India requested a blog to continue the discussion on "Now, do we need God?". The discussion so far is copied below. Although it is difficult to find time on weekdays, I'll make sincere attempts to respond as soon as possible.

Now, do we need God?

Amit Bhattacharya, 28 May 2010, 12:19 AM IST

Last week, a US geneticist announced a breakthrough of profound implications. The maverick J Craig Venter and his team said they had succeeded in 'creating' life through a bacterial genome built entirely in the lab.

Pause for a moment to consider the feat. A set of synthetic genes, made bit by bit from laboratory chemicals, was inserted into a bacterial cell – and voila, the cell not only lived but also replicated! The implications of the work are fascinating: Apart from the gains in biotechnology, about which scientific opinion is split, the achievement shows it's possible to 'duplicate' life synthetically.

Of course, the 'life' that Venter created was the simplest of bacterium called Mycoplasma mycoides. This one-celled organism has just around 500 genes (compare that with 25,000 genes in the human genome). And Venter only created the bacterium's genome – the cell's control station. Building an entire cell from scratch is a different proposition, far more complicated and requiring tools we simply don't have at the moment. But Venter's work reinforces the possibility of putting together 'life' in the lab – at least in theory – and it again shows that fundamentally life is an aggregation of complex chemicals, arranged in particularly complicated ways that allow for replication.

Now, where does that leave the role of God? Over the past few centuries, the space for a Creator of life and the Universe has been steadily shrinking. First, the invention of the telescope and the work of pioneers like Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler opened up the skies to critical inquiry, eventually leaving no physical space for heaven and hell (Remember Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev's famous quote, “Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any God there”?).

Later developments have joined many other dots, showing that the Universe follows laws of physics and is made of elements we can identify. There are now seriously consistent theories that seek to explain the Universe's beginnings and possible end.

The next incursion into God's domain was made in the 19th century, when Darwin propounded the theory of evolution and Mendel opened up the field of genetics. The modern versions of these theories explain how life began and evolved on Earth – again leaving little room for 'Special Creation'.

Now with the possibility, albeit in the distant future, of artificially creating the basic unit of life – the cell – bottom-up in the lab, humans stand on the edge of another paradigm.

It's a great irony of our times, therefore, that even as the physical space for God has shrunk remarkably, spiritually, He has more than held his turf. Today, the need for God in people's lives remains as great as ever. If anything, religiosity seems to be on the upsurge in most parts of the world.

This blog doesn't aim to prove or disprove God's existence (the two sides will probably continue to talk past each for as long as one can imagine). It only seeks to point out that the intellectual disconnect between science and spirituality is perhaps greater today than ever before.

Naushad says:

May 29,2010 at 01:01 AM IST

I don't know what you mean by special creation.

An intellectual needs to see through the prism of reason rather than the prism of mythology. A western thinker has rightly said that if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you would have to reinvent the whole universe.

When we talk about creation, we talk about something original, which has no precedent. All else is imitation. An imitator can be just that, an imitator, not a creator. The pseudo intelligentia needs to understand this.

God does not work on whims & fancies. These are human tendencies. God has framed operating laws which we call laws of nature, physical laws, universal truths etc.. Hence, each metal has a specific property. Metals & minerals are available in nature in quantities which correspond to human needs. Intelligent logistics, isn't it? The number of days in a year are precisely constant, all cosmic bodies move in their orbits without accidents or chaos, etc etc..

Just open your eyes to understand how God operates. The earth is the giant laboratory where He manifests his will through his unchanging laws. So, as a natural progression of his laws, life got created through chemical reaction of naturally occuring substances like clay & water and progressed into different species. Time, space & matter are God's creation and he is not constrained by them. So if evolution occured in a space of several millenia by human standards, the duration is of no consequence to God because He is everlasting & time is his creation. If He had whims & fancies than we would have gravity one day & no gravity on another day. But God's design is a consistent one.

What I mean to convey is that we may imitate some of God's ways, but we will always depend on God for everything. Even the know-how is provided by Him. If mankind understands this, than all science will lead us closer to God. After all, science can only discover what is already there. It can't create the unprecedented.

Hope this makes sense.

(Reply to Naushad)- Amit Bhattacharya says:

May 29,2010 at 01:48 AM IST

naushad, it makes perfect sense, except for the fact that you have laid out God's project (of having created a Universe with rules etc) without giving an iota of proof that it's Him who has done all this and it didn't happen by chance. In other words, in your hypothesis you are presupposing the existance of a creator. That's putting the horse before the cart. This is what enlightened athiests will tell you.
The point I was making through the blog is that we live at a time when the dichotomy between science and spirituality is greater than ever before. In the pre-industrial age, belief in God was natural, because it was consistent with our view of the world. Even science and mathematics of the time served the ends of religion.
The development of science rocked this consistent world. Today, we believe in God DESPITE science -- be it due to tradition, religion or our individual convictions.

(Reply to Amit Bhattacharya)- Naushad says:

May 29,2010 at 10:58 AM IST

Hi Amit,

In Einstein's words, "The universe is too organized to be the result of an accident". The tradition & religion that you refer to is based on beliefs of forefathers which people internalize in childhood & never question in adult life. Hence we have a set of medieval beliefs which are inconsistent with contemporary human knowledge. In fact, almost all so-called religions are a dogma propagated & accepted without undergoing the lens of reason & intellect. That is why we have anthromorphic depictions of God. To most people, God is nothing more than a deity to worship & bribe, out of need or greed.

That is why we have a clash of religious beliefs and modern science. What I am saying is that there is a definite existence of a supreme power & a set of laws which govern the happenings in the universe. We have only started to understand many of these laws. When we discover these, we call it science. For our convenience we have classified these into different disciplines like astronomy, geology, biology, etc. When we say Newton's law, the atheists accept, but when we say God's law, many still reject. The fact remains that Newton only 'discovered' it, he did not 'create' the laws of gravity.

An enlightened mind will understand that any event doesn't occur on it's own. An external stimulus required. The big bang would also have happened due to a stimulus. The what & how is yet beyond our current level of understanding. Many of the 'theories' in science are also just theories. I would not include them in the domain of true scientific knowledge until they are proven. Till then, they are hypothesis at best. Yet, these theories are accepted and worked-on by the scientific community.

If this is so, then the enlightened atheists should also turn their minds to study the universal force that controls everything with precision, which is sadly deityfied by sellers of dogma, who in turn stop a large part of mankind to truely discover God through science & reflection.

(Reply to Naushad)- Richa says:

May 29,2010 at 06:57 PM IST

Well said Naushad. I was trying to make a similar point above but you have chosen better words and explained it in a better manner.

(Reply to Naushad)- ihara says:

May 29,2010 at 08:46 PM IST

I agree Naushad that we humans used to either discover or invent, but in the "synthetic life" experiment, they have prepared a self-replicating living thing using non-living materials. This is definitely a 'creation of life'. You said 'God has framed universal laws...God created species through chemical reaction using clay, water...Time is His creation', these are something that science, atheists reject. How do you know that its created by God? How did He do that? We should honestly accept that we do not know, rather than assuming it to be God.I agree that everything needs a stimulus, but for big bang, there can be a possibility of happening without any stimulus also, we do not know that honestly. Everything that exists in this universe is bounded by some laws, even God must be bounded by some laws, if not, then prove it.

(Reply to Naushad)- Varun says:

May 29,2010 at 11:40 PM IST

Naushad...As a scientist, I shall try to refute some of arguments

1) Einstein did say that the universe is too organized to be the result of an accident. But Einstein was very skeptical of a lot of things, which are actually true. For instance, Einstein also said the following about Quantum mechanics "God doesn't play dice" referring to the probability of an electron existing in a given point in space. But it is true. Subatomic particles can exist in several places at the same time. Would you then call such a universe "organized"? Besides the universe is not a clock (as Newton envisioned it to be).

2) Your argument of the big bang requiring a stimulus (by which you surely mean that God created the Big Bang begs the question "What or Who created God" and "What created the being that created God" and ad infinitum. You cannot rebuke my question by saying "God is all powerful" and beyond our understanding, because you will be making an argument from belief and furthermore the argument is a stop gap argument that prevents one from observation because no matter how long and how hard I look (or experiment) I cannot find God since he's beyond my senses (BUT I must take it for granted that he does exist). As a scientist, I cannot do that.

3) When you say "theory", you once again fall into a very common trap. When a scientist refers to something as a "theory", then he/she is referring to a hypothesis that has been scientifically tested and accounts for a large body of evidence. We know Darwin was right. Yet we still call his ideas the "theory of evolution". Do you think it's false, just because it's called a theory? I don't think so.

4) Why must we always assume that God created gravity? Why must we always assume that God should exist just because the physical constants of our universe are fine tuned (to allow life)? Why can't their exist an infinite number of universes?

Why must we believe in God?

(Reply to Amit Bhattacharya)- Sudhakaran says:

May 29,2010 at 01:43 PM IST

Dear Amit, in your piece you stated that 'Over the past few centuries, the space for a Creator of life [...]'. I would like to insert another mode of thinking from the ancient mystical traditions that say that there is no 'creator of life', but 'creator is life'. In that paradigm, Science and mysticism have a common ground for reconciliation. I should also add that many of Naushad's points make incisive sense.

(Reply to Sudhakaran)- Naushad says:

May 30,2010 at 01:58 AM IST

This is for skeptics who want a proof for God's existence.

1. Have you seen, heard, smelt or physically perceived "thought"? Can you prove that something called "thought" exists?

2. By whose wisdom it is that there is particular mathematical sequence found in nature that was discovered by Fibonacci? Is mathematics also a result of an accident?

3. While you read this, the photons reaching your retina interact with protein 11-cis retinal which in turn change shape and fit into another protein rhodopsin. This compound then changes the ionic concentration of the cell resulting into an electrical impulse. This impulse converts into chemical energy at nerve junctions and then again into electrical signal at the next nerve. This way it reaches the center of vision in the brain. The brain then compares this signal to the info in the memory center and finally the signal is interpreted. All this happens in a fraction of a second and you see & process continuous information because this happens on a continuous basis.
Did all this intelligence (even at cellular level) come because of a freak accident or is there an intelligent design implementing a certain precise order?

4. Why does everyone have to die? Do you have a clear, precise answer?

5. If the earth & the moon are closer to each other relative to the sun, why is the moon not under the sun's gravitational effect? Why does it rotate & revolve around the earth instead of the sun while far more distant pluto revolves around the sun? Is there any rationale in this?

Now my point: God (not any deity/idol), the power/intelligence behind everything within & around us, does not manifest Himself in the way deniers of His existence would want to perceive Him. He is unlike His creation. He can only be 'known' by studying everything & anything that exists. Be it cosmic bodies or atoms, all are powered and governed by Him. He can only be known by "reflection". Atheists need to realize that their philosophical premise is flawed.

(Reply to Sudhakaran)- Naushad says:

May 30,2010 at 01:07 PM IST

Varun, the probability of electrons’ existing in space was always there. Did that make the universe chaotic? It only changed our way of understanding. “God does not play dice” means that things don’t happen by chance. They happen as per a design. Einstein’s wisdom could encompass this. Billions of galaxies with zillions of bodies exist without running into each other. If you were to simulate this into computer and change the constants even by nth fraction, there would be utter chaos. This intelligent mathematics in the physical world proves that a powerful intelligence exists.

Modern science is just several decades old. We are still in the nascent stage of discovery & understanding. Your arguments come from a ‘physical science’ standpoint. You ask for physical proof of everything. For you the ‘causing agent’ is not real if it is not physically verifiable or quantifiable, even if it manifests itself in many realities. If I say that Einstein was a great mind and came up with powerful ideas you will accept the statement. His work proved his wisdom & ideas he was physically available to see. But did you see his ‘wisdom’ or ‘ideas’ physically? Were they measurable or quantifiable? If you are getting my point, there is much more beyond the physicality of things. What cannot be proved physically does exist.

You ask ‘who created God’. It is a limitation of our mind that we project our ‘perceived’ reality on everything else. Because we & everything around us is ‘created’, our mind doesn’t accept an idea of eternal, everlasting, always there. For example, we understand wisdom & ideas without sensing them physically, but can you explain these to the most intelligent chimpanzee? You see, there is a limit to his understanding. Do you think that our capacity to understand is limitless? Somewhere, this constrains many people from going beyond the physical. Because you can’t grasp it doesn’t mean that it’s not there.

You ask, why must we believe in God. I ask, why not?

(Reply to Naushad)- Sudhakaran says:

May 29,2010 at 01:58 AM IST

Very illuminating thoughts. Thank you. I deeply enjoyed your beautiful writing style as well. It is a joy to read deep intelligent analyses situated in rich literary style, elements that your remarks indicate amply.

(Reply to Naushad)- R says:

May 30,2010 at 02:54 AM IST

Your arguments are very well written and so are the responses by few. Enjoyed reading both sides.

(Reply to R)- Varun says:

May 30,2010 at 01:10 PM IST

Naushad...Once again I will try and refute your arguments

1) Your first argument is completely ambiguous. If you are referring to "qualia" (what neuroscientists consider to be a unit of consciousness), then we do have several models that do explain why qualia arises in a neural network, none of which needs God in the picture.

2) Whether mathematics exists independently of the human mind or is a creation of the human mind is a big philosophical debate in itself. Both schools are divided on the opinion. We have no reason to believe that one may be true over the other. You are once again making an argument from belief and not being objective.

3)Yes I'm familiar with the visual pathway. I'm a neuroscientist. But you're making an argument from ignorance. You're talking about irreducible complexity (which was proposed by a creationist named Michael Behe). Behe's argument was that the eye is too well designed to be a result of evolution and must hence indicate the presence of a designer. He also says that if you remove a part of the eye, it stops working. BUT THIS IS NOT TRUE. Evolution explains how an organism, even if it has 1/2 an eye or 1/4 of an eye can still use it. The complexity of the eye comes out of evolution. Read the complete and detailed explanation on my blog
http://lightsabre87.blogspot.com/2009/08/art-of-evolving.html

Once he realized that his eye argument got him nowhere, he shifted to the bacterial flagellum (which was also disposed of by evolutionists in a very elegant way)

4) Why does everyone have to die? Do you want me to answer this in a philosophical or scientific manner. Inside each cell, at the end of each chromosome (strands of DNA if you like) are structures called telomeres. The telomeres are molecular clocks. With each replication of DNA, they shorten in size until at a critical point, any further shortening causes errors in DNA replication. This severely affects the cell leading to massive cell death in all organs.

5) Is there a rationale behind why the moon rotates around the earth and not the Sun despite the sun being more massive. YES of course there is. You forget the fact that even though the sun is more massive, it is very far away from the moon compared to the earth moon distance. Around any object is a volume of space called the Hill sphere where the gravitational force of a less massive object dominates despite the existence of a more massive object that is further away. There is a mathematical derivation for this. The moon lies within the Hill sphere of the earth. In essence actually, the moon also orbits the sun. Since both the earth and the moon lie within the Sun's Hill sphere (and so does Pluto for that matter). It's just that the influence of the earth's Hill sphere causes it to rotate around the earth more than it rotates around the sun.

How can a philosophical premise be flawed? All science and philosophy is based on logic. If our premises were flawed, we wouldn't have made such massive progress in science and philosophy over the centuries

Your final argument once again demonstrates your ignorance and your desperation to believe in God... "He is unlike his creation and can only be known by studying everything that exists around him"...How do you know? Did he tell you that? As I've said over and over again, making arguments from belief does NOT make it true

(Reply to Varun)- Naushad says:

May 30,2010 at 03:37 PM IST

Varun, you are again indulging in the what & how. You are unable to explain why. That's where science hands over to intellectual reason. Once we understand what happens & how it happens, the quest for 'why' brings more answers. Unfortunately for you, the answers to 'why' mostly fall outside the realm of physical science.

Let me also clarify that we cannot reach the 'why' stage unless the 'what, when, how, where' are understood well. That is why I say that all science leads to God. You can explain how & when cells stop replicating leading to death. You cannot explain why.

Ditto with moon around the earth. I raised these questions for the skeptics to think beyond the obvious. Obviously you are well informed and have good understanding of natural phenomena. But you seem to have missed the point I am making. I am saying that evolution did occur in the manner we have discovered it. My argument is not anti-evolutionist. My point is that it did not occur on it's own. You cannot discount the natural intelligence in the way things are structured.

By simply turning a blind eye to this & being in vehement denial doesn't justify a stand. Of course, you cannot see the power that we call God by using your faculties of seeing, hearing, smell or touch. But you have the faculty of thinking. When you assimilate the knowledge that you have and ask yourself 'why' repeatedly, you will end up with some answers & more questions. That would be the beginning of a new search.

On the thought question, I did not refer to qualia. My simple point is that something as basic as a 'thought' is beyond the physical realm. Only it's manifestations are visible in actions. Similarly, the power we call God manifests in all things we study. If you are not writing off 'thought' then why is God a figment of imagination for you?

Ultimately, what is the use of knowledge if it does not lead to wisdom? To me, science is a medium towards a more valuable discovery. So where is the question of blind belief?

(Reply to Varun)- Varun says:

May 30,2010 at 06:04 PM IST

Naushad...Well I must say I'm starting to enjoy this debate with you.

I definitely understand the point that you want to get at. I think in the end, all of us want to know the answers to the following.

1) Why do we exist? Is there a special purpose.

2) Why does the Universe exist? Does the universe have a special purpose.

3) If there is a special purpose, then did this creation come about by random chance or from a creator?

For me all these questions are philosophical and not religious. I think the religious god (if one does exist is frivolous in comparison to the philosophical one). Personally I'm an atheist and part of this may stem from being in science for quite a while. I'm not much of a philosopher but from a scientific viewpoint it seems quite unlikely that a supernatural being does exist considering we can explain several natural phenomena without bringing God in. I agree that answering the questions "Do we have a purpose" and "Does the Universe have a purpose" will be the final ones. Perhaps the universe in itself doesn't have any purpose. Perhaps one day we will be able to demonstrate that the universe was created randomly and so were we. Which is why I think in the end Science can answer the question "Does God exist". In my posts, all I tried to point out was that some of your points were simply requiring belief in a supernatural being. The beauty of Nature does not necessarily imply a higher order that created it. You should read Dawkins'book "The Blind Watchmaker"

(Reply to Varun)- Naushad says:

May 31,2010 at 01:28 AM IST

Varun, I can understand where you are coming from on philosophical god & religious god. It appears that your objection to God is more an objection to religion. Allow me to clarify that religion & God are separate. Religions, as we know them, are no more than a set of rituals & dogma. The preachers & advocates of religion have objectified God and ascribe human qualities to him with generous doses of superhuman traits. Thus, we have depictions of 10 handed deities or descriptions of an angry, emotional god who can be manipulated by penance & offerings. There are volumes & volumes of mythology to support this sort of brand building & marketing. Logic & reason have no place in this scheme of things because the foundation is of superstition & blind belief. You are not allowed to question anything and if you dare to, you will be branded blasphemous or apostate. This scheme serves the interests of the priesthood and their elite patrons. This is the product of human creativity gone the wrong way.

I need to emphasize that believing in God doesn’t mean ascribing to a particular set of meaningless rituals, assuming a particular garb or doing some mumbo jumbo. At the same time, I feel the need for a common universal system which can unify mankind and lead us towards peaceful & equitable advancement based on shared values. This requires arriving at the pertinent question you have mentioned- the purpose of life.

Before we can go to this stage, since you are still skeptical about God’s existence, I would like to present certain facts to you in the form of a booklet. Since the posts here are limited to 2000 characters, I cannot put the contents here. You can drop a mail at nosh.prince@gmail.com (I don’t get time to blog. At anytime, such discussion is better) & I’ll send it to you. We will continue our dialogue to the stage of ‘what is my purpose’. This invitation is open for anyone who wants to be part of this discussion.