Challenging Atheism

In the past year I have occasionally logged onto this and other websites to read the many intriguing articles in the battle between religion and atheism. I must say, though I have faith in God, I find some of the arguments put forward by many religious folk easy to “shoot down”. In other words, though originating from a genuine faith and belief, many religious arguments fail to challenge the hardened atheist. The typical atheist is generally looking for genuine proof or sound logic pointing to the existence of God. We all however agree that there is no conclusive scientific evidence on the existence of God, so the only way forward is to examine known facts and attempt to find meaning using reasonable logic. Indeed, this is far from the traditional approach to faith, but as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9 : 20, “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. And to those under the law I became like one under the law, so as to win those under the law”. So it is my hope that more and more believers start engaging atheists with not only scriptures, but also with scientific facts and principles.

Can a person come to know God through Science and logic? Not traditionally, but considering how the mind of an atheist works, I feel this is the correct avenue to take. Moreover, a lot of atheists have placed their hope on science in order to explain our existence. So to challenge that mindset, we must start with the science behind their ‘faith’, or lack thereof. With this in mind, the typical starting point for me in any engagement with an atheist is to try and arrive at a common understanding on the possible origins of matter or energy. The central question being that if energy cannot be created or destroyed, then where did everything we see around us come from? Some scientists have suggested that our universe originated from a previous universe that collapsed, but the question still remains, where did that original energy or universe come from? An alternate theory is that the energy has “always” existed. My personal view which is shared by many scientists is that before the universe(s) existed, something else must have existed. And from this "thing", the extremely large amount of energy needed to create our universe is somehow "created" or "generated".

This view suggests a possible violation of the law of conservation of energy in order to “create” matter or energy. That said, a lot of research has gone into trying to determine where all that energy might have come from, and one of the promising areas in this quest is the area of quantum fluctuations. These have been observed to "create" virtual particles without necessarily violating the law of conservation of energy. So there certainly is strong sentiment within the scientific community that the energy needed to drive the Big Bang originated from somewhere else. And I’m not saying that God created the energy. The energy could have easily come from another natural process altogether. So this cannot be viewed as conclusive evidence, but a view on the possible origins of matter or energy is essential going forward.

Moving away from this, a common argument often put across by atheists to challenge the possible existence of a creator is to present the problem of Infinite Regress. The argument being that if this universe was created by God, who then created God? Further to that, who then created God’s creator, and so on. This creates an endless chain of creators; each creator needing his or her own creator until “infinity”. This is a divergent problem thought to mean that God "cannot" exist or that he did not create the universe. One "logical" way this argument can be countered is by using an analogy to the Infinite Monkey Theorem. This theorem can be taken to mean that in a random system, and given a sufficiently large enough amount of time, anything that can happen has a good chance that it will eventually happen. This theorem has in some instances and in some variants been used in arguments to illustrate, but not prove the idea that life on Earth could have arisen through random interactions of matter over time. So if life on earth could have arisen through the random interactions of matter over billions of years, it is also possible that given a significantly large enough amount of time, an intelligent being, aka God, could also have possibly come into existence. So, “God” does not necessarily need a creator, much like the universe or life does not necessarily need a creator. Note; although religion considers God to be self-existent, the supposed creation of God or the universe discussed here implies they are both created from something already there. The other implication would be that once God came into existence, he then proceeds to intelligently create this universe, setting up all the natural laws of physics, and planting the seeds of life.

Again, a counter argument known as the Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit, would be to say if God is complex or intelligent enough to create our universe and indeed time itself, then “God's” existence by whatever means would be infinitely less likely than the possibility of our universe spontaneously existing on its own. In other words, the possibility of a spontaneous universe is more likely than the possibility of the existence of a complex and intelligent God. To counter this, we only need to look at human scientific advancement over the past millennia. We currently have the technology to simulate star and planet formation, we can even clone living organisms.  In say 100 000 years, who is to say we won’t be able to do what “God” can do? So if God needed to be created, then creating “God” does not necessarily need to be infinitely more complex or harder than our own supposed creation through random interactions and luck. I think the key trait behind “God” is intelligence, not necessarily complexity. And as scripture puts it, "God" supposedly has the simplistic appearance of a man (Ezekiel 1 : 26 and Genesis 1 : 27). So take that, Richard Dawkins!

Going back to the problem of Infinite Regress, though atheists use this argument to discredit the possible existence of God, the reality is they also face the same problem in trying to explain the existence of our universe. Where did the universe come from? If it came from another universe or from something else, where did that universe or "other thing" come from, and so on until infinity. In spite of this apparent paradox, we exist. So whatever chain of events led to our existence; somehow Infinite Regress is not a problem for our universe, else we simply wouldn't be here. In my view, the only way this is possible is if something in the creation chain or hierarchy is somehow self-existent or self-creating, else our present reality collapses by virtue of Infinite Regress. In other words, through a chain of creation originating from a self-existent object or being, our universe is ultimately formed. All other creation “scenarios” succumb to Infinite Regress. So my conclusion is that we did not come from “nothing”, but from something already there. Self-existence is perhaps cemented by the fact that not a single scientific theory attempts to explain our existence from “nothing”.

How can anything exist without being created or formed from other things? I don't know. Does the idea of self-existence surprise me? Not at all, especially if you consider that a lot of what we call science today sounds very strange. For instance, aspects of Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics sound more like science fiction; we have discovered properties of matter and the universe that are far from intuitive. It appears the more we understand the universe, the stranger it gets. Its because of things like this that I feel self-existence is well within reason. And although this concept is frowned upon by both atheists and conventional science, it might in fact be the central one to our existence.