Man is a multidimensional being possessing and displaying the following broad aspects of existence:
(i) Spiritual; (ii) Conscious or mental; (iii) Rational or intellectual; (iv) Moral; (v) Individual-Social-Economic-Political; (vi) Emotional; (vii) Aesthetic; and (viii) Material or physical.
The underlying rationale behind all the arguments for God is to posit an ultimate anchor for all of these dimensions of human existence.
(1.) If we first consider (viii), the material or physical aspect of man and the universe that it lives in, the essence of the arguments for God’s existence in this regard is to find the ultimate/first cause behind all physical entities; or the absolute/necessary entity anchoring all contingent material entities, as explained subsequently.
(2.) It is argued using logical-mathematical reasoning and science that the universe is not eternal and infinite, that is, it has a finite past and hence an origin, and entities which have an origin must have an originator.
An originator is necessary for entities which have an origin because something cannot originate from nothingness, and also, an entity cannot originate itself while it was non-existent, and also, there cannot be an infinite regress of originators; thus there must be an unoriginated, that is, an eternal entity which originates everything else. According to theism, that unoriginated, eternal, originator of everything is, no points for guessing, God! This is the gist of the famous argument from first cause.
(3.) The universe being finite in time and space, it is dependent upon another entity for its origin, the universe is therefore contingent. Contingent means not absolute, something that could have not been existing, but exists because it was brought into existence by something else, thus not necessary, hence contingent. A contingent entity might have been brought into existence by another contingent entity, like a person produced by his parents (contingent beings) who in turn were produced by their respective parents (contingent beings); but this regress of contingent beings giving rise to other contingent beings must terminate in an ultimate/absolute/necessary (eternal and infinite) entity. Thus, contingent entities, like this universe, ultimately need an absolute entity to explain their nature and origin. According to theism, that absolute entity is, again, God! This is the gist of the famous argument from contingency.
(4.) Then there’s the ontological argument which I consider to be just another version of the contingency argument, basically asserting that a perfect being exists necessarily. It says that the existence of a perfect being is plausible, but if its existence be limited to plausibility then it’s contingent existence, hence imperfect, since contingency is imperfection, thus perfection must subsume ontological necessity. So by the very definition of a perfect being, its plausible existence automatically translates to necessary existence! Thus, a necessary being exists (simply by the virtue of its definition)!
(5.) The complexity of the universe in general and of life in particular is so baffling that theists concede it is designed by an ultimately intelligent and creative designer cum engineer, God! This in essence is the famous design argument or the teleological argument for God’s existence.
(6.) The nature of everything that exists is the way it is because God made it to be the way it is! In essence, this is arguing that every entity exhibits some properties, or to say it differently, follows some patterns or laws, and these laws or patterns that entities follow are determined and implemented by God. This is the gist of the famous law giver argument.
(7.) Similar arguments rope in God as an ultimate anchor or source of (i) our spiritual existence and experiences; (ii) our consciousness or mind; (iii) our rational faculties; (iv) our morality; (v) our personalities, societies, economics and politics; (vi) our sense of and longing for ultimate purpose, justice, and bliss; (vii) and our aesthetic sense.
Basically, God, as the absolute basis of all aspects of human existence! This is a comprehensive summary of what the arguments for God essentially stand for.
(8.) And then based upon the idea of messengers or incarnations of God, theistic religion is taken as the guide to several or all aspects of human existence. Validity of theistic religions is not the topic of this article though.
(9.) Now, nobody disagrees with the proposition that there must be an ultimate source of everything. Atheists, agnostics, theists, all agree that there is an ultimate being or an absolute entity which is the source or anchor of all that exists. The only difference is in their description of that ultimate being. For theists it’s an intelligent and powerful being called God; for non-theists it is the universe itself, or a multiverse, or a fundamental field. Let’s elaborate!
(10.) Revisiting points 1 to 4; it’s not very difficult to see why so many atheists are not convinced with these arguments which favour God:
(a) We have already discussed in the article on epistemology that the only means to obtain primary truths or premises is through observation and induction. Now, logically speaking, when we observe ourselves and the things around us, and the world as a whole, and then the galaxies of the observable universe, we find that all of this is contingent in nature. Since the components that the observable universe is made of are contingent, we can infer inductively that the universe as a whole is contingent too, thus the universe cannot be eternal and infinite, that is, it can’t be the ultimate entity. The nature of the observable universe points towards an ultimate-absolute entity (let’s call it the UAE) from which our contingent universe originated!
(b) Mathematical physics offers several possible candidates for the tag of the ultimate-absolute entity (UAE)!
(c) Since we are talking about the contingency of the universe which is a physical entity, the branch of knowledge which is best suited to answer this question is physics and there are several cyclic cosmological models of physics which call for an infinite series of universes, coming into existence one after the other, in a Big Bang or a Big Bounce, then contracting in a Big Crunch to reach a point of ‘singularity’ and then repeat Big Bang/Bounce! For example, the Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC) of Roger Penrose, the famous 2020 Nobel Laureate. Another popular theory is the Loop Quantum Cosmology, amongst others. So our current universe could be just one in an infinite series or cycle of universes which exist infinitely in time!
(d) Then there’s the eternal-infinite ‘multiverse’ (let’s call it the EIM) of the M-theory and the theory of eternal inflation, which postulate a mathematical possibility of an infinite number of parallel universes (our universe being just one of them) coming into and going out of existence every moment! It’s basically an infinite-eternal ensemble or pool of finite universes.
(e) The EIM is a better candidate for the UAE, than the eternal cyclic universe, because the cyclic universe is infinite in time, but finite in space, since it expands to its final limit and then contracts to a singularity. So being eternal but finite makes it a weak candidate for the tag of the UAE. On the contrary, the EIM is infinite in both time and space, since it consists of not one but an infinite set of universes coming into and out of existence in an eternal and infinite field.
(f) The EIM, if analysed in terms of the quantum field theory (QFT), emerges as a result of quantum fluctuations or random excitations in an eternal-infinite field, let’s call it the Fundamental Field (FF). Universes which are finite in time and space pop into existence as quantum fluctuations from the FF, and eventually collapse or die out, but the process exists ad infinitum, producing an infinite ensemble of finite universes out of the FF which exists eternally and infinitely. Now, modern physics vouches for the existence of several distinct fields like the electromagnetic field and the gravitational field; all of which must have a common field, the FF, as their underlying stratum or source; and this FF being eternal and infinite, would be the UAE that all people agree must exist.
(g) It must be borne in mind that the notion of a field in advanced physics is different from the concept of a field taught in school. At the school level, a field is said to be the ‘sphere of influence’ of an entity, for instance, a magnet has a sphere or area around it wherein it exerts its magnetic force, and that sphere of its magnetic influence is termed as the ‘magnetic field’. If a second magnet comes inside the magnetic field of the first magnet then the first magnet exerts its influence on the second magnet by a force of attraction or repulsion on the second magnet.
But we learn in the QFT that the electromagnetic field exists in the universe as one of its building blocks. Excitations in the electromagnetic field produce the fundamental particles called photons. Then there’s the electron field whose quantum fluctuations produce the fundamental particles called electrons. A quark field which produces quarks; and so on. These fields are not ‘spheres of influences’, rather independent entities themselves; they possess different levels of energy, and excitations in these fields give rise to quanta or packets or bundles of energy in the form of corresponding particles.
(h) From point (10.f) thus, it can be contended that the FF is more basic than the EIM and hence a better candidate for the tag of the UAE. But do the FF or the EIM actually exist? We cannot be sure, because our only way to be certain about anything is through observation and concurrent reporting, but we cannot observe the FF or the EIM, just as we cannot observe God! What we can observe is just the world around us and parts of the universe and then from the same observations infer the existence of both God and the FF/EIM. So, if the M-theory or the eternal inflation theory is/are true and the FF/EIM exists, we don’t definitively know as of now, but there’s a high chance given the much touted mathematical coherence and elegance of the M-theory, the eternal inflation theory and the QFT, then this worldview wouldn’t require God as the ultimate entity which produces everything, since the FF/EIM would itself be the UAE, self-containing, self-sustaining, unoriginated, originating everything else, just like the God of theism!
(i) It’s absurd to cite medieval mathematical tactics to try to prove that physical infinities cannot exist! Some proponents of theism still do that and it reflects poorly on them. If it were impossible to mathematically conceive of a physical entity which is eternal and infinite, then the theories of mathematical physics cited above would have never been conceived! The fact that such elaborate theories of the universe have been developed by modern mathematical physicists of international repute attests to the fact that mathematically speaking it’s certainly plausible for FF or the EIM to exist, just as it is logically plausible that an eternal God exists!
(j) When a theist philosopher gives the example of reaching from point ‘p’ to point ‘q’ by successively halving the distance between them, he contends that mathematically we can continue halving the distance between two points ad infinitum and never reach zero, mathematically, so halving of distances would be an infinite process, mathematically, although the actual distance traversed would be finite since the point ‘q’ would actually be reached; and so he concludes that actual infinities do not exist in the physical world, infinity is just an abstract or mathematical construct, not a real one! But this contention is misplaced, as even in mathematics there are two types of infinite series; a convergent series, and a non-convergent series. A convergent infinite series actually adds up to a finite number, like the scenario mentioned above, an infinite series of numbers representing distances successively halved, as in the real world, gives a finite result, that is, a finite distance would be traversed, although the series is infinite.
(k) Another way of looking at this problem is to say that before the destination ‘q’ is reached, a traveller must first reach half the distance between ‘p’ and ‘q’; and before reaching half the distance, one-fourth of the distance must be reached, and before one-fourth is reached, one-eighth must be reached, and this can go on ad infinitum, essentially implying an infinite number of steps would be needed before accomplishing even the first step, which implies there would be no first step, thus the journey would not even begin! But we know for sure that such journeys are undertaken by all and sundry on an hourly basis at the least, universally! This contradiction between the mathematical picture and the real world physical picture thus implies that although in mathematical terms an infinite process precedes a finite physical process, in reality only a finite physical process occurs, thus mathematical infinities are merely abstract constructs and don’t actually materialize physically. Let’s check whether there’s any flaw in this reasoning.
(l) Suppose the distance to be traversed between two points is 4 feet and one step of mine covers one foot distance. Now, the argument above says that before the complete distance of 4 feet is covered, one-half (2 feet) must be covered, and prior to that, one-fourth (1 foot) must be covered, and prior to that, one-eighth (0.5 feet) must be covered, but the reality here is, I wouldn’t at all need to cover that one-eighth part distance because the minimum I would cover in my first step is 1 foot; hence the infinite mathematical sequence alluded to above doesn’t apply here! Thus the mathematical construct involving an infinite number of steps is inappropriate to describe the given situation, since only four steps would be involved here, given the minimum distance that could be covered in a step is one foot! There’s a quantum here which cannot be diminished. Thus there cannot be any 0.5 feet preceded by 0.25 feet preceded by 0.125 feet and so on. Thus the claim that a contradiction here rules out the existence of physical infinities is a bogus one. I consider all such arguments to be fallacious.
(m) Because, when dealing with a finite entity, as in the case under discussion, of a finite distance to be traversed, it is fundamentally wrong to use a mathematical construct of the finite entity and create an infinitude based scenario within it and then extract a contradiction from it to drive home the conclusion that physical infinities do not exist! It is obvious that an infinite entity would not actually exist within any finite entity, even though the mathematical formulation of the finite entity might mathematically incorporate the logical symbolism of infinity in it. Real infinitude is excluded, from the very beginning, by the finitude of the entity under consideration! Thus the paradox extracted from such arguments is not genuine but fished out artificially and hence does not prove that physical infinities cannot exist.
(n) What it does prove is that the mathematical formulations for a physical entity are quite often inadequate and hence don’t correspond to the complete reality of the physical entity they set out to describe, as demonstrated in (l) above. Or the fact that a mathematical possibility doesn’t imply ontological necessity, i.e.; if we show that something could possibly exist, mathematically, it’s not necessary that it actually exists! When we logically infer the existence of God from the observations of contingent entities in the universe, we don’t necessarily ‘prove’ His actual existence. Similarly, when we mathematically infer the existence of the FF (or the EIM), we don’t necessarily ‘prove’ their actual existence! The existence of all these entities thus remains plausible but not definitive!
(o) So it’s actually a matter of taste here as to which one would you choose, the God of theism or the FF/EIM of mathematical physics! People with a naturalistic or physical bent of mind would opt for the latter, while those with an inclination towards metaphysical narratives would go for the former. None would be right or wrong in the true sense because just as the existence of God is inductively inferred from our observations of the world and the observable universe, FF/EIM too is mathematically inferred from the observations of the world and the observable universe, while some questions, discussed below, remain unanswered pertaining to both God and the FF/EIM!
(p) We don’t know how exactly God exists, that is, the how-ness of His existence cannot be grasped by us; similarly, the exact how-ness of the existence of the FF/EIM is currently not known to us. We cannot do anything more than infer the existence and some characteristics of God and the FF/EIM from whatever we can observe in ourselves, the world and the observable universe. We cannot directly observe God or the FF/EIM to know how exactly they exist. That’s unfortunately the limit of our epistemic abilities!
(q) We infer some attributes or characteristics of God, just like we do for the FF/EIM. But why does God have the properties that He has, why not different ones? We cannot have a definite answer to this question beyond asserting that God is the UAE and hence His attributes too are absolute and hence cannot be questioned, since only contingent attributes can be questioned as to why they are the way they are. Likewise, we cannot say why exactly the features of the FF/EIM are the way they are. All we can say is that the FF/EIM is the UAE and hence its attributes too are absolute and hence cannot be questioned; only contingent attributes can be questioned as to why they are the way they are.
(r) How exactly God created everything that exists? Again that’s a question we cannot answer fully and definitively, with various theologies speculating different details of the divine creation process, yet this inability to know and elaborate how exactly God created everything doesn’t disprove the existence of God. Likewise, in the domain of science, we observe whatever we can observe and develop several theories on how the universe and all that it contains came to be, but the differences in the details of the various scientific theories don’t disprove the one foundational field or the EIM as the UAE of the naturalistic worldview! Let’s delve into this issue for some more detail.
The origin of this universe of ours from the FF can be explained in principle by the QFT, but with various branches of details which are debated and disagreed upon by the physicists. For instance, some physicists would look at it in terms of the M-theory, while others would go with the bubble universes hypothesis as described by the theory of eternal inflation, both introduced in point (10.d).
According to the M-theory version, the random quantum fluctuations in the FF give rise to strands of energy called ‘strings’ which vibrate in 11 dimensions, ten of them being spatial dimensions and the eleventh one being the time dimension. The strings can stretch to form membrane-like structures called ‘branes’. When two branes collide, a Big Bang occurs, giving rise to two universes thus! The shapes of the ten spatial dimensions in which a brane vibrates determine the frequency of vibration of the brane. The frequency of vibration of the brane in turn determines the laws of the universe formed upon the brane’s collision with another brane, i.e.; the patterns in which the particles and forces form and behave in the universe are dependent upon the frequency of vibration of the universe’s foundational brane. And the nature of particles and forces in a universe determines the course of evolution of the universe as to whether it would harbour ‘life’ and in what form.
On the other hand, as per the theory of eternal inflation, an infinite number of universes bubble out of the FF and then go boom, in a Big Bang, which causes an extremely rapid phase of expansion leading to the evolution of the universes in various ways; the evolution of our universe described by, among other theories, the standard model of cosmology.
The difference in the details of these theories doesn’t invalidate the underlying idea of a physical UAE, since both of these narratives, the M-theory and the eternal inflation theory, call for the EIM in an eternal-infinite process of origins from the FF!
(s) The standard model, with its intricate details, is said to best fit the data obtained so far from the observations of the universe as deep and as far as currently possible, hence it’s ‘as of now the most established’ theory of the evolution of the universe post the Big Bang. The broad picture is this: as the universe expanded and cooled, clusters of gases and dust containing various chemical elements came together under gravity to form billions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each. Inside the galaxies, planets formed as elements, rocks, and gases coalesced under the mutual pull of gravity. Planets thus formed were pulled by the gravity of the nearest star causing them to revolve around it in a planetary system like our very own Solar System.
(t) In the hundreds of billions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each, containing trillions of planets in billions of planetary systems thus, some planets were, by the necessity of chance, inevitably in the Goldilocks zone to permit the chemical origin of life! The overall theory of the origin of life from chemicals, commonly called abiogenesis, is more or less agreed upon by the modern scientific community, but there are many critical details over which the scientists differ, especially regarding the type of place where the process got initiated and the exact pathway traversed before chemistry became biochemistry, physics became biology, and physical entities became ‘living’ entities!
(u) Although far from actually producing a ‘living cell’ in the lab purely physically-chemically, science has come a long way from the legendary but primitive Miller-Urey experiment and Darwin’s Primordial Soup to Nobel laureates in chemistry and biology and a slew of scientists devoting their lives to cracking the mystery of the origin of life. Francis Crick, Manfred Eigen, Walter Gilbert, Jack Szostak, Gerald Joyce, John Sutherland, Phillipp Holliger, Steven Benner, Bill Martin, Mike Russell, Nick Lane, Geoffrey Hoffmann, Jeremy England, and a host of other scientists are making significant headways towards a robust theory of abiogenesis and laboratory synthesis of carbon based life under estimated prebiotic conditions.
(v) As and when these scientists hit success, we will get a detailed picture of how life ‘could’ have originated in the first place, a plausibly correct picture though, not definitively correct, because knowing something can move from point ‘a’ to ‘z’ via point ‘b’, doesn’t necessarily prove that it actually went through the same path, as there could be other paths too that we might fail to discover or acknowledge! The same can be said regarding the naturalist narratives on the arrival of complex life forms, consecutive to the origins of life.
(w) The theory of ‘evolution through random mutations and natural selections’ is till date the most established scientific theory on the natural development of complex organisms, although not definitive, as the paths and mechanisms which according to the theory lead to the development of complex living beings are inductively inferred from whatever limited observations we have so far managed to lay our hands on, like the observation of the microevolution of species and the fossils uncovered till date; and hence like any theory, major future observations could bring forth a radically different picture of the issue and thus prove the theory to be wrong in parts or in its totality.
(x) Unless we can go back in time and actually witness how it all occurred, all our scientific narratives on the origin and evolution of the universe and life in it would just be the ‘best possible as of now’ truths, nothing more! Nevertheless, all of these theories, mentioned so far, do lend support to the naturalistic worldview, and hence the supporters of naturalism find stronger reasons to discard belief in the God of theism!
(y) The vital issue here is not the lack of physical theories for the mechanisms of origin and evolution of the universe and life in it, the question that is most critical regarding these theories is this:
Is it reasonable to believe that the origin of the universe with the exact laws that permit the origin and flourishing of life, the evolution of the universe to reach a state which could cause the origin of life, and ultimately the evolution of complex living organisms, all of this just happened on its own, just by billions of strokes of sweet luck, without any external intelligence designing and creating it? Can randomness, chance, and necessity of some sort explain our origins and our existence in the current form?
As I understand the issue, the answer is a vehement YES! The physical theories do address this issue, and we’ll see how, as we now deal with the design argument and the law-giver argument mentioned in points (5) and (6).
(11) In the naturalistic worldview, randomness and chance produce necessities. It’s the power of ‘random necessity’ which produces sustained patterns (which we observe and term as ‘laws’) driving origins and evolutions of universes and complex structures therein.
(a) The term ‘laws of the universe’ could be misleading as what we call ‘laws’ and hence induce the need for a ‘law giver’ could simply be reduced to ‘patterns’ which exist at certain patches of space-time. Let me give an example.
We always observe that the Earth pulls objects towards itself and the force of the pull follows a certain ‘law’ which we named as the ‘universal law of gravitation’ in Newtonian physics. But it could be contended that this so-called ‘law’ is just a pattern of behaviour which observable objects follow in our section of space-time which is just an infinitesimal speck in the vast totality of space-time continuum. If we could observe outside of our patch of space-time, or observe things at the deepest, most fundamental level, of the FF may be, then we might as well find no pattern at all, just total chaos or randomness pervading everywhere! And within this inherently random entity, only in small patches, particles randomly exhibit repetitive behaviour, which then leads to arrangements which produce ordered physical structures. We observe these and call them ‘laws of nature’, though there are no ‘laws’ in reality, it’s just random repetitive behaviour that particles exhibit in short stretches of space-time! Let’s try to visualize this using an easy logical example.
(b) Consider the two sequences of numbers consisting of 30 digits each: 101010101010101010101010101010 and 101101100110111100010001110010. The first sequence is ordered, consisting of a definite pattern, that is, the pair of digits ‘10’ is repeating itself 15 times. The second sequence has no order or pattern and seems to be a purely random assortment of 1s and 0s. Each sequence is generated by tossing 30 coins simultaneously, and recording 1 for tails and 0 for heads. Now, if one coin is tossed, there can be two possible results, tail or head, so the sequences can be 1 or 0. If two coins are tossed, then the sequences which are possible are (head, head), (head, tail), (tail, head), (tail, tail), i.e.; the sequences 00, 01, 10, 11, so for 2 coins and two results for each coin, possible permutations are 2*2 = 2^2 = 4. So with 30 coins, there are 2^30 different sequences possible, which is more than a billion or a hundred crore possibilities; that is, 2^30 different sequences can be generated if we toss 30 coins.
(c) Now, generating such sequences of digits by tossing coins is not an intelligent creative process, no conscious design is involved in it, as the people tossing the coins don’t consciously choose the patterns of heads and tails. And, when a coin is tossed, the chances of getting heads and tails are equal, that is, there is a 50% chance of a head and a 50% chance of a tail, hence the probability of getting both the above sequences are equal, and similarly, the probabilities of getting each of the 2^30 different sequences are equal, hence getting all sorts of patterned/ordered sequences is no big deal, and is as probable as getting haphazard sequences. Thus we see that order can be generated even if there is no conscious creativity behind it, that is, intelligent design is not necessary to produce physical order; order can come out of random events as well! Thus, it’s well understood and agreed upon by philosophers and scientists that patterns or orders do emerge out of randomness. Thus we see order at the molecular level despite the randomness at the subatomic level. Despite the randomness of the electrons at the subatomic level, the chemical bonds formed between atoms due to the interaction of the electrons display neat order or patterns of behaviour.
(d) Now, if the above process is infinite, it’s probable that the ordered sequence 101010101010101010101010101010 could occur, say 100 times consecutively, and this would be just a miniscule portion of the infinite whole. A small observer who happens to witness only 50 times out the 100 times that the pattern gets repeated, would deem this to be a ‘law’ that the process follows, i.e.; always generating the sequence 101010101010101010101010101010; although in the actual scheme of things, this sequence is simply a random assortment which happens to occur only a 100 times merely by chance, just as any other random sequence could occur any number of times! Because of the insignificant lifespan of the observer, the observer fails to see the real picture, the sheer randomness underpinning the fleetingly apparent pattern or ‘law’! Similarly, in an infinite and eternal multiverse originating from the FF, all sorts of arrangements of the fundamental building blocks are equally probable, hence the arrangement that exists in this universe with all its life forms, was inevitable due to the sheer necessity of chance, in at least one of the infinite number of universes.
(e) Now the above narrative is a plausible narrative, not the ‘necessarily true’ narrative since it’s an inferential construction built upon whatever limited observations of the universe we have so far garnered and hence it paints a probabilistic path for how things might have possibly occurred, and finding that something could have occurred in a certain way doesn’t necessarily prove that it actually occurred in the very same way, as already argued in (10.v to 10.x)!
(f) So the naturalistic as well as the theistic narratives still hold ground, none able to rout out the other any decisively. Which one should you choose, the God of theism or the randomness and necessity inherent in the meta narrative of the FF-multiverse-abiogenesis- evolution by mutation and natural selection? I addressed this question in point (10.o)! It’s a matter of taste, if you consider this question of God as an isolated issue. But if you consider this issue as part of a bigger whole which concerns not just our subscription to one of theism, atheism, or agnosticism, but concerning our entire outlook towards and actions in life, then it’s a matter of not just taste but also the practical aspects encompassing all the eight dimensions of our existence which must be factored in and weighed before we make our choice! This is where the picture of religions or philosophical systems as theories comes into the scene and thus must be analysed accordingly, but that is a chapter we’ll visit later in time!
(12) Here, so far, this was all about the UAE from the perspective of the material dimension of our existence. We now need to go beyond the material realm and assess the seven other dimensions as well.
(a) For theists, who have throughout the ages formed the overwhelming majority of thinkers and laymen alike, God as the ultimate anchor and source of every dimension of our existence is an easy narrative! It’s so beautifully simple and elegant to say that its God who conceived, calculated, designed, produced, established, and maintains: (i) Our spiritual existence and experiences, (ii) our consciousness or mind, (iii) our rational faculties, (iv) our morality, (v) our individual-social-economic-political being (vi) our sense of, and longing for, ultimate purpose, justice, and bliss; (vii) our aesthetic sense; and as already addressed, (viii) our material or physical being.
I must say though, it’s only the resultant concept of God as the ultimate source of everything that is elegantly simple, the arguments and debates leading up to this result, on the other hand, have over the years become incredibly convoluted, so much so that the philosophy of religion, with God’s existence as its central theme, has grown into an enormous subject in its own right, with even the individual arguments being worked upon by hundreds of academics the world over, spawning doctoral dissertations and academic papers in the thousands! Just google some of the popular arguments like the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and the sheer volume of the material on these would baffle you!
(b) On the non-theist side, there’s always been thinkers and groups, small and big, who have figured out and opted for alternative narratives which enable us to explain our existence and purpose devoid of God; never as numerous and strong as they are now, given the explosion of free thought through centuries of developments in the physical, psychological, social, economic, political, legal and moral sciences!
No wonder that Gautama Buddha, despite being an agnostic, as far as 2500 years back in time, gave us a spiritual and moral theory which to this day answers the existential questions of millions on this planet!
Likewise Confucius, who was an agnostic in around the same period as the Buddha, gave a spiritual, moral, social, political system which to this day exerts influence in China and some other parts of East Asia.
Mahavira was an atheist, and like the Buddha, propounded a considerably influential spiritual and moral theory!
Karl Marx was an atheist who gave us a social-economic-political system which formed the bedrock of several nations for decades!
David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, Sean Carroll, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, David Eagleman, Graham Oppy, and many more, have envisioned and shaped Godless theories and philosophical systems which facilitate like never before the Godless manoeuvres of all the eight dimensions of human existence!
Mill espoused a theory of morality which could function without the need for God at its centre.
In my agnostic days, I too espoused the ‘Platinum Rule of Ethics’ as a basis for morality in godless societies!
Sartre gave a Godless discourse on human emotions, morals, and society. So did Freud.
Foucault attempted to explain human society in terms of the dynamics of power.
Harris, Dennett, Eagleman, and others have attempted to theorize how the immaterial ‘consciousness’ and ‘intelligence’ emerge as a result of complex interactive phenomena in the material brain. Purely material narratives have been developed to explain human ‘spiritual’ experiences too.
So we have several God free alternatives to explain every dimension of our existence. Stringing together some of these into a single theory would produce a complete picture of life as an alternative to the big theistic frameworks like Islam and Christianity. The theistic assertions that without God and religion there can be no morality or purpose or consciousness or whatever, are thus proven to be false on this account! You can make sense of the world and your place in it, your origins and end, your purpose and peace, with or without God. There are several theories, both with and without God; the question is, which theory is the most correct? And that should be the determinant of our choice! Hence, inevitably now, we must analyse all the theories in the marketplace of ideas, to find the one most suitable for us, to each his own! Without further ado thus, let’s embark on that journey now!