Atheism vs Religion

Here is an interesting perspective I have from a friend which I thought might go well with some of the other lively discussions we have had in the past for a Sunday evening post. I don't necessarily agree with all of it but I think it's an interesting perspective to stir into the mix.

As one who has a keen sense of the need to answer the questions relating to our origin, destiny, purpose and potential, I feel compelled to say something about my observations and concerns.

It seems to me that in debate so frequently seen between atheist and theist, the theist appears, more often that not, to be unprepared for the task at hand.

This concerns me as an atheist turned theist, who for the last 30 years has only found evidence for theism, since the advent of militant atheism threatens, humanity and all life on earth.

So let me consider the most basic question about existence.
If we begin from the scientific perspective, which is increasingly the preferred perspective, the most popular theory for the origin of the Universe is the Big bang Theory.

The Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang Theory, it is claimed by the esteemed professor of theoretical physics Stephen Hawking, occurred as a result of gravity, at a “time” when there was no matter and that the explosion which it generated produced all the matter in our visible universe. I should add that my understanding of the the term visible universe is : all matter and energy we can detect by any means, i.e. through analysis of any detectable energy emitted an any object in any wave form.

The first problem I see with this explanation is that gravity is a function of the existence of matter i.e. where there is no matter, there is no gravity. So gravity could not have existed if there were no matter.

It may be argued that it appears that there is far more gravity in the universe than there is matter to manifest and therefore gravity may exist independent of matter but of course we now attribute this additional gravity to our "deduced" of dark matter and dark energy and these are also meant to have sprung into existence with the big bang and therefore the balance between matter and gravity it seems, may be in tact, mooting this argument. This does not prove Hawking is wrong but it begs explanation.

If we accept the concept of the Big Bang, for the purpose of this discussion and pose the question : What was in existence before this event?

Since the Big Bang Theory is meant to address the question of the origin of the Universe, let us consider this question a little more closely. It is my belief that the word universe originally referred to all things in existence and later came to mean 'our visible universe' which is also referred to as the cosmos. I will use the word universe to refer to all things in existence and cosmos to detectable existence.

Since the gravity, which magically produced the Big Bang due to the instability of the vacuum, supposedly existed, it is not really the origin we are discussing but rather the transformation of all energy and matter we are aware of from the state it was in prior to the advent into the state currently in our cognisance, as opposed to the concept “ex nihilo” i.e. nothing existed prior to the Big Bang.

In this sense therefore, the scientific explanation the Big Bang Theory is meant to provide and which supposedly refutes creationism, does nothing of the sort, but rather addresses the reorganisation of matter-energy.

The many meanings we find in dictionaries for the word creation all refer to the organisation of things into a new form except for the concept of “creation ex nihilo”. Creation of a work of art, of a government, of an item of clothing, of this world and all things in it "creationism", are all reorganisations of existing energy.

The creation of all things, as portrayed by the biblical account, which most would agree is meant to be a simplified explanation designed to provide man with nothing more than the concept that God is responsible and the perspective God know would be best for us at that time, provides no more explanation for the origin of matter and energy than does the Big Bang Theory but rather refers to the reorganisation of these building blocks into an environment we can abide.

Neither of the two concepts is actually more plausible than the other. The idea that all things just burst into existence as a result of a force which does not exist in the absence of the matter-energy it supposedly produced is no more plausible than the idea of an intelligence having reorganised the matter-energy into is current form.

Neither actually address the origin of anything except states we term solid, liquid, gaseous and plasma and the forms of matter-energy which constitute the substances in each state.

Both beg the question, what is the origin of that which was in existence before the event, be it creation or Big Bang. It fact, by definition the Big Bang is a creation or reorganisation of mater-energy. The question really is : Was an intelligence pre-existent and responsible in any way.

If one considers the Creation ex nihilo version, one is still left with the question – Where did God come from. God's creation of all things does not reveal the origin at all since all things are then the product of something, God, which was already in existence.

To my mind it is inconceivable that there was ever a time when the space in which all things exist did not exist. I cannot conceive of the non-existence of space, as I can the non-existence of matter-energy.
While Einstein's theory suggests that if there were no space then there would be no time and visa versa, since it depicts time as a measurement of the change in space, I cannot conceive of the non-existence of space or time and I will therefore proceed on the assumption that these do and always have existed.

In fact, it seems more than reasonable to assume, on the basis of arguments already stated, that all things/energy which exist, have always existed, sometimes in a liquid , gaseous, plasma or material state, and probably, according to the conservation of energy principle, have merely been organised and disintegrated time and again in a battle between entropy and creation or organisation.

Creationists often argue, illogically to my tiny mind, that the majesty of things we perceive is evidence of a creator. This argument makes no sense to me since if the majesty is grounds for a creator then the majesty of the creator is grounds for at least an equivalent creator which must have created that creator and so forth. This is what I actually believe.

The concept of origin is equivalent in its propensity to boggle the mind, as the concept of infinity or eternity. But the concept of spirit seems unacceptable to many scientists, despite the fact that dark-matter and anti-matter, for example, are at least as difficult to accept.

Whether any of these concepts seem silly to a mind or not seems to be entirely dependent on perspective and I have viewed the matter from both the atheist and theist view without that change affecting my conclusions.

Creationism

In order to challenge the assertion of Atheism that creationism is implausible, I will postulate some things which may offend some and which do not reflect my own beliefs by adequately reveal some of the many flaws in atheist thinking.

The idea that God organised this world into an environment suitable for our habitation is far less implausible than many atheists and scientists would have me believe. Indeed we have in mind to do the very same thing in the fairly near future.

The objectives for Mars, which must include an attempt to alter the atmosphere over time in order to produce an environment suitable for man's habitation and the technological developments in processing moon-dust to produce oxygen and a myriad of other far more amazing accomplishments speak powerfully to the idea that we will soon be ready to produce the changes required on Mars just as we seem to be doing the reverse here on Earth.

Imagine that we completed the Terra-formation of Mars or rather another planet which orbits Alpha Centauri for example and upon completion we transported two or five thousand cryogenically preserved people to the planet surface and provided a protective dome environment for them to live in. Lets go so far as to provide these people with no recollection of a previous life. Maybe they were born and developed to adulthood on the say 40 year journey to Alpha Centauri so that they had never lived on earth.

Imagine that we provided overseers to live with them for a time and provide instruction on how they should proceed and that we did all this in order to provide them with a new beginning, free from the cognisance of concepts which we would rather they were unaware of. Lets say that we provided information about their origin in a simplistic form, like the biblical creationist account and we ultimately left them to develop on their own. Lets say that we told them that if they ever opened the door(akin to partaking of the fruit) to the outside of the dome(Eden) that they would learn about the relatively harsh world they had become a part of and that they could never go back to Eden as the Eden environment would be compromised.

Imagine that we returned from time to time to upgrade their knowledge base as they developed over the centuries and that when we did this we communicated with those who were sensitive to telepathic or other psychic communications or alternatively that we provided high-tech equipment to those who thereby became messengers (prophets) and ensured that these means of communication never fell into the hands of anyone else and that these prophets provided information on the likelihood that their peoples choices would determine results.

Lets say that we communicated our wishes to them concerning their well-being and provided templates for social structure which would most likely produce improvements in their health, technological advancement, growth and development, crime prevention capabilities and the like. Maybe we referred to ourselves as gods, being so superior to them and having provided their existence, there habitat and much of which made their existence possible.

Let us imagine that there were some reason why this was all necessary, a reason I cannot now conceive of but which would become apparent in the changing world we face over the next century, which would include artificial intelligence, robots superior to humans, genetic modification which might decimate mankind on Earth, over-population, a solar ejection, killer asteroid or asteroid shower, solar wind, giant meteorite, super-virus or any number of possibilities which may trigger the move to start a new humanity elsewhere. Imagine that in time we resolved our problems here on Earth and then went about visiting the newly formed and populated planet a hundred years or so later and then every so often.

But wait, there is a story very similar to this, in which the “godly race” genetically modifies a species(us) already found on earth by splicing a few hundred genes into our DNA with a view to ultimately producing a species which would be useful to the “godly race” upon their return at a future date while visiting on every return of their planet to the solar system on its enormous elliptical orbit every three thousand years or more. This is the story found on the clay tablets interpreted by Zechariah Sitchin who has ostensibly dedicated his life to the work of discovery of these “facts”. This is supposedly related to the extra planet discovered in 2000 circa which Sitchin spoke of in 1985 circa which will come through our solar system shortly.

Which ever version we consider, these are certainly plausible explanations for the origin of man on this earth and would tie up biblical and other religious concepts with a vast array of otherwise dissociated evidences for extraterrestrial visitation found in the Bible and many other religious texts, in rock-paintings around the world, in ancient cultural artefacts, stories and other sources from vastly different cultures, some of which seem to have no common source other than the extra-terrestrials visitations, not to mention the thousands of modern-day UFO and other extra-terrestrial related reports, the discovery of ancient structures claimed to be built by means beyond man's capability, aligned extremely accurately with cosmological significant entities which reveal extremely high levels of scientific knowledge.

So let us imagine that the reason for the many questions man must have about why God allows suffering in humans, children and especially animals due to the vast array of oppressive forces from human abuse to toxicity, environmental pressures, harmful micro-organisms and the like, may be that God is subject to the same universal realities that we are. Maybe omnipotent as depicted in the bible means “all power possible to man/God” rather than power to do anything.

If omnipotent means “power to do all things” then why would God require creatures of Earth to eat each other to survive? Surely we would derive our nutrition from inanimate sources and live in a world without death or at least without the seemingly barbaric slaughter required for us to survive, even if we only consume plants, almost all creatures consume other organisms, seemingly unnecessarily.

Imagine that God really is our Father and that we really are his children, i.e. that we were not created like a potter creates a pot but rather like normal human parents create a child.

If we can imagine that there is no beginning to the existence of time or space or matter or energy, then surely we can also imagine that there was no first man or God since man is a child of God man is a god in embryo. If man sent some of his children to occupy another planet and start a new “mankind” on that planet, then that is exactly what would be, God and man, the very same race.

When Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and the Pharisees gathered stones to stone him he said to them, “ye do err, not knowing your scriptures, for is it not written, “I have said, ye are gods and all of you are the children of the most high”, if this was said unto them to whom the gospel came, how can you say of him that was sent and sanctified, ye blaspheme, because I said I am the Son of God.

Jesus was confirming to them that they really are the children of God and moreover, that they were gods. He was telling them that if they are obedient, they will grow up to be Gods, just like our Father. He was telling them that Adam was not sculpted as clay but born as we all are.

If we are God's children then God is someone's child and his Father is someone's child and so on for ever into the past and the future.
Elohim actually means “The Gods”. Jesus says in the New Testament that if we are not one we are not his. Jesus says that he did nothing except that which he has seen his Father do. That means that his Father was once as Jesus was at that time, doing that which Jesus was doing here on Earth. Jesus said that he is one with the Father (one in purpose). Jesus said in the New Testament that faith in Jesus Christ, sufficient to perform great miracles and sufficient to convince “Christians” that they are saved, is insufficient to save them and that only they who do the will of the Father are permitted into “the Kingdom of my Father”

All this means that all those who are one in purpose and have proven worthy of entrance to the Kingdom of our Father and are worthy of being heirs with the Son, become Elohim. God is a Man of Holiness and Elohim is God and all other Gods, his brothers, sisters, parents, grand parents and so forth ad infinitum. Note the similarity to the eastern concept of God and God Conciousness.
So if God was once where we are then God is subject to the same requirements that we are and the matter of eating other creatures, suffering, etcetera is explained in that these same conditions exist for all who develop along this path of progression.

Further to this, we are told that eventually the lamb will lie down with the lion and they shall eat grass. This may well be a simplification but it may also mean that ultimately we will achieve a level of being on this planet or in this solar system or in this humanity's realm of influence, at which we will derive our nutrition from sources other than the seemingly barbaric sources we now utilise.

A read of the book “The physics of the impossible” will reveal a categorisation of envisaged civilisations ranging from those using Fossil Fuels or lower forms of energy at category zero, to those harnessing the energy of the galaxy at category three. The categories above zero, as described in this physicists view, would appear as Gods to any category zero civilisation and the odds of these civilisations existing, according to our knowledge of science and cosmology are virtually 100 %.

Atheists claim that theists should bear the burden of proof but I most certainly differ on that point and claim the the theist view of creator, eternal life, progression and divine lineage is no more fantastic than the idea that all this came into existence as a result of nothing more than natural selection. In fact given the scenario I have depicted earlier in this chapter, it is more than possible that both are in play. It may well be that natural selection brought man to a stage where the preparation of planets, possibly even planets which were previously inhabited by dinosaurs in the ancient past, for habitation by new human families, meant that man, the original, became God to his offspring on the new planet or even where the new race were a genetically engineered species(us) already found on the planet or brought along. It may simply be that we were found here as an inferior species and have been schooled up to our current level of intelligence and progression.

Aside from this obvious possibility, obvious to any who have a reasonable knowledge of the current status of scientific discovery and space exploration technology, let us consider the onus which devolves upon the Atheist to prove his claim that there is no God, that all this could have occurred by chance and that natural selection is the process by which man came to be.

Men should be allowed to believe whatever they choose so long as their beliefs do not jeopardise the rights of others and therefore men should not be required to prove the existence of God. In fact, if man could prove the existence of God then God's stated plan would be thwarted since it is a primary purpose of our sojourn on Earth to determine if man will be faithful to the righteousness which in innate in him despite the lack of propensity to prove the existence of God.

Since the teachings of Jesus Christ are such that should man follow them, he would never cause any detriment to any soul, the fault, where it appears to lie with Christianity, actually lies with those who claim to be Christians rather than with Christianity.
So man might therefore feasibly be required, in an instance in which his actions result in detriment to others, to prove that his actions are in keeping with the teachings of Jesus Christ rather than having to prove the existence of God.

Atheists on the other hand should not have to prove that God does not exist, except where they seek to influence others to believe that God does not exist or where their belief that God does not exist is detrimental to the rights of others.

Since Atheists are beginning to claim that religion is detrimental to mankind it now devolves upon the Atheist to prove that God does not exist.

On the subject of proving that natural selection is responsible for the existence of man and all life, the task seems to me quite insurmountable. Natural selection assumes the pre-existence of living organisms and is therefore responsible for very little in terms of the existence of anything except the course of change. Man has himself had quite an influence on the process given the short time he has had to prove so through the genetic modification of dogs and other species through breeding selection.

Explanations for the origin of life seem to amount to the postulation that molecules randomly arranged into patterns which resulted in the fundamental building blocks of carbon based life as we know it. There was a surge in claims in this regard some time ago when scientists produced nucleic acids in laboratory experiments. It was later shown that the conditions required to produce them could not feasibly be present in any primordial soup. Aside from this, the accidental occurrence of such a “building block of life” by no means implies that all the other building blocks would be randomly produced or that they would get together to produce life. Moreover the arrangement of these building blocks into a DNA structure, even if it were feasible, does not mean that life would exist.

The Gospel claims that all things were created spiritually before they were created physically. It further claims that the essence of life is not physical but spiritual. This implies that even if the material building blocks were in place, intelligence would have to attend in order for life to result.

While Atheist scientists may ridicule this claim, science has so little grasp on the true nature of things that any assertion is little more than wild speculation. Consider the history of scientific discovery and resultant theory in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmology. Quantum physics and the uncertainty principle, String Theory, the Cosmological Constant, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Anti Matter, Anti Energy, Parallel Universes, Anti-gravity and the list goes on. These concepts are as ridiculous as concepts could feasibly get.

We cannot explain the apparent force pulling the Cosmos apart and so we decide that Dark Matter must account for it.

How can Atheists ridicule religion. Religion is nowhere near as far fetched a reality as science would have it.

Science would have us believe that time slows down or speeds up depending on the speed at which we travel, that time stops at the speed of light and reverses beyond that. That for every choice made by every living thing, there is another universe in which we chose every other possibility. Preposterous does not even begin to describe this assertion.

Science leaves religion so far in the dust in terms of ridiculous claims that there truly is no contest.

The truth therefore is that we know so little about our existence that we should be less arrogant about our assertions and look forward to learning ever more about ourselves and the world around us.

Sources

Physics of the Impossible - Michio Kaku
Videos - Stephen Hawking
The King James Bible
The Doctrine and Covenants - J Smith
The 12th planet - Zachariah Sitchin
The Book of Moses - J Smith
The Book of Abraham - J Smith