Loss of Faith - The Gain

Theism is belief in a god or gods. Atheism is ‘a’, i.e., ‘without’ theism, or without belief in a god or gods. It is theists who are claiming a positive belief. Therefore, the onus of proof lies on their shoulders. Atheists are not asserting a belief. They merely do not find theists’ belief convincing. If the evidence is not forthcoming, is insufficient, or self-contradictory, the belief can be rejected forthwith. Einstein did not believe that Newton’s definition of gravity as the force of attraction between two bodies was the correct interpretation of gravity. He held that gravity results from warping of spacetime by massive bodies. He could not readily summon the maths to prove his theory. But he did not relinquish the job of proving his hypothesis to the Newtonians. He worked for ten years to arrive at the concise mathematical formulation of his theory of gravitation. Result was the theory of General Relativity – believed to be one of the most beautiful inventions of human mind.

 

Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina begins with an arresting sentence. ‘All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its unique way.’

What Tolstoy said of a family is true of every life. Suffering in the world is infinite and ubiquitous. Joys are limited: a full stomach, a healthy body, a loving partner, and a secure environment. Misery comes in many hues: Millions are born and die in perpetual want, a majority of world’s population till very recently spent more than twelve hours a day labouring like beasts of burden to afford means to keep body and soul together, hundreds of thousands of children are born every year with gross physical and mental disabilities which make each day of their and their parents’ lives an insufferable trial, generations of people in strife-torn countries have not seen a day of peace in their lives, hordes are butchered in wars in which they had no involvement, billions of people have perished in religious persecutions, young girls and old mothers are raped in front of their families because they are from a particular region, community, or religion. I have not mentioned the natural calamities. And neither the anguish that visit all of us frequently in our lives and seem to make every breath an effort: unbearable loss of a loved one, repeated failures in spite of all efforts, deep agony of unrequited love.

No religion has ever offered a persuasive explanation for misery. Every attempt is blatantly ludicrous and infantile at its best and heartlessly monstrous at its worst; a punishment for misdeeds committed in a past life, retribution for the original sin of an imaginary ancestor, a penalty for the decadence of values in the society – values as decreed by a fictitious supreme ruler, as a counterbalance to the joys so that people recognise the bliss of happiness.

Ours is just one of the millions of species on earth. Suffering afflicts all life. It would seem God created billions of prey animals only as fodder for the predators. Ichneumon wasps, a family of parasitoid wasps, lay eggs in a live caterpillar, after stinging it precisely so that it is paralysed but remains alive. Their growing progeny then feeds on the live host. Charles Darwin was revolted by this elegant cruelty of nature. He wrote, ‘I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.’

Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher said this on human suffering more than two thousand years ago. ‘Is God willing to prevent, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able, not willing? Then why call him God.’

Boundless wretchedness in a world created and nurtured by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-beneficent God is a sufficient reason to reject the God hypothesis. But there are many more.

One feature common to all religions is belief in a god or gods possessing supernatural powers. But all beliefs define this lynchpin of their faith only in vague terms. Is it a being? Is it an energy? If a being, why is it not visible? How can one ascertain its presence in a physical world? If an energy, what is its nature? We know only a limited forms of fundamental energies in universe: chemical, electrical, radiant, mechanical, thermal, and nuclear. What form is God energy? Or is it a force? Of these there are four in nature: gravity, weak and strong nuclear forces, and electromagnetic force. Which of these is God force? If none, then how does it exercise its power. Power so immense it cannot be constrained by the limits imposed by the inherent properties of matter. Shouldn’t believers have been more explicit, more clearheaded in positing the attributes of the entity on whose existence their belief survives?

A school of theists tells us that God is higher consciousness of universe. They profess that every human being should aspire to become one with this supreme consciousness. It is essential to be meticulously objective and shun fogginess when defining such momentous concepts as God. Consciousness is being aware of yourself and the world. There is no hierarchy of consciousness representing its lower or higher forms. It is a function of our brain as digestion is of alimentary canal, metabolism is of liver, and excretion of body wastes is of kidneys. There is no digestion, metabolism, or excretion in absence of gut, liver, or kidney. Similarly, there cannot be consciousness without a brain. Consciousness originates from the matter of brain. When this matter suffers as with ageing, illness, or under the influence of certain drugs, consciousness is altered. And when matter, the body housing the brain perishes, its consciousness is obliterated too. We are not told whose brain and body higher consciousness represents? How does one sense its presence? And then, how do two consciousness become one?

Every description of God’s form is thus garbled. It lends itself to countless interpretations all equally muddled.

One universal trait of God entity is its ability to act in contravention to nature. For this reason, it is supernatural. How do we know something that is supernatural? Every phenomenon in the universe – movement of subatomic particles in the matter and the celestial bodies in space, functioning of human body including brain – is explained by certain simple properties of matter. Supernatural is that which is beyond nature. We can not understand supernatural through the natural processes of our brain. That which is not of nature, cannot affect nature. Because it can do so only through a natural phenomenon. And then, it will no longer be supernatural. We may not understand these phenomena today – as our ancestors did not grasp the movement of heavenly bodies, night and day following each other, pestilence in the community. But they are not beyond the realm of nature. Supernatural of yesterday is today’s natural.

Of course, the existence of supernatural cannot be disproved either. Bertrand Russell’s teapot analogy comes to mind. Russell argued that if he ‘were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a China teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes.’ But if he were to assert that this teapot is responsible for the origin of universe and all life on earth, prescribes a code of conduct for humans and punishes all acts of wilfulness, one will be right in disbelieving him. Robert M. Pirsig in his hugely successful book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, reflects these thoughts precisely, ‘When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a religion’.

Believers do not reveal god’s form clearly, but it’s attributes are laid with exceptional eloquence. One of these is his ability to work miracles. Miracles abound in every religion. A miracle is an event that defies laws of nature. It also defies credulity; virgin giving birth without consorting with a male partner (parthenocarpy in homo sapiens?), girls being impregnated by the rays of sun, rivers being parted in their flow by the wave of a hand, beheaded son being brought back to life with an animal head, flying chariots, instant cure of intractable maladies. Miracles are religion. Evidence. None. Zilch. Carl Sagan, the American astrophysicist, and a celebrated science writer, said, ‘Extraordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence.’ David Hume, the eighteenth-century Scot philosopher, is worth quoting for his views on miracles. ‘No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish.’ Do we even see a glimmer of proof for these astonishing claims of religion? Do such laughable attributes invite unstinted belief in the entity possessing them? It seems yes – for a vast majority of humankind.

God’s ability to answer prayers is his one supreme function. Praying is requesting God to intervene in your affairs, in breach of the laws of nature, to grant you a wish you know you do not deserve. Prayers thus, need a miracle. Templeton Foundation, established to provide a patina of scientific rigour to religious beliefs, funded a study, costing $ 2.4 million, to establish the effects of prayers. 1802 patients planned for open-heart surgery (Coronary Artery Bypass Graft) were selected. They were divided in three groups. Group 1 received prayers and did not know it, group 2 did not receive prayers and did not know it, group 3 received prayers and knew it. Results of the study were published in American Heart Journal in its April 2006 issue. No difference was found in the outcome of surgery in the group being prayed for and the group not being prayed for. But the group of patients who were prayed for and knew it had increased rate of complications. Perhaps they suffered increased stress wondering if they suffered such a serious disease as to require prayers in addition to medical therapy. Many prominent theologists, promptly repudiated the study after its results were known. One can guess their response had prayers been found to have a positive outcome.

Innumerable people find religion’s scatter-brained beliefs, assertions, and philosophy unacceptable. But they are loathe to call this bluff. A person’s belief in every other field – be it the sphere of their profession, idea of beauty, love life, family values, taste of music and literature, idea of patriotism – can be mocked, criticized, and pummeled most cruelly. But you must not hint a word of criticism about their religion. Why does religion occupy this exalted status in the cultural attributes of which it is but one aspect? Daniel Dennett, the American philosopher, says people may not have a belief in religious doctrines but they believe in ‘belief’. They know what belief asserts is indefensible but they feel that this belief has intangible benefits essential for society. Dennett cites examples of ‘belief in belief’ in other fields. Economists know that a sound currency depends on people believing that the currency is sound and they propagate this belief.

Some scientists bend over backwards to accommodate belief in God, knowing fully well the absurdity of the God hypothesis. Stephen J. Gould, a renowned American evolutionary biologist, author of many popular and critically acclaimed books on evolution, coined a new term, Non-Overlapping Magistreria (NOMA) to appease religionists. ‘The magisterium of science covers the empirical realm…The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning…these two magisteria do not overlap.’ Truth is one. And so is the reality. Effort of science, be it in any domain, is to seek this essence of reality. There can not be two mutually exclusive fields of reality to be pursued by two systems antithetical in their every method of investigation. Science has unveiled much of nature’s secrets, but much remains hidden too. Hundreds of thousands of seekers are spending every moment of their working days, to illuminate these dark lands. Shouldn’t religion specify what is its field of investigation? Shouldn’t it tell the mankind how it intends to labour in its endeavours? Has religion ever offered believable evidence for the truths it claims are in its domain?

A vast literature is available on God in every theology. How has this knowledge been gained? Religion’s primary source is revealed truth; either a direct communication to a chosen person or by the penances of others. This is the fundamental difference between science and religion. Science believes in observing the natural phenomena, arriving at a hypothesis based on these, repeatedly testing the hypothesis in laboratories, formulating a theory, verifying it with similar other phenomena in nature, and most importantly, framing criteria which can falsify the theory if these were proved correct. Science demands scepticism, religion subverts doubt. People seek a system of knowledge because they  do not know what to believe. Religion demands you go to it with unquestioned faith in its arguments. How can faith be a precondition to know the unknown. You are not required to avow faith in modern science before reading relativity or psychology. Mark Twain said, ‘Faith is believing something you know ain’t true’. One needs faith to believe homeopathy, vaastushastra, and voodoo medicine.

Einstein’s equations of General relativity predicted an unstable universe which could be expanding or contracting. But Einstein believed in a stable universe. He introduced a Cosmological Constant in his field equations to justify a static universe. Years later Edwin Hubble, the American physicist, discovered through observation of light emanating from distant galaxies that the universe was expanding. Einstein accepted the truth of this irrefutable evidence. He called the Cosmological Constant his biggest blunder. Later physicists discovered that the cosmological constant, as predicted by Einstein, was not a blunder but an inseparable component of his field equations. But it accurately predicts the Negative Energy now thought responsible for an expanding universe.

Science encourages dissent, religion suppresses it. Religion worships dogma. Science discards a fact which has been proven wrong and moves ahead. Religion clings to its doctrines invented in the era when civilisations were incipient and knowledge about universe was primitive. One needs a rock-solid faith to adopt them as guiding tenets in life. It appears billions of people have more than this.

PS: These reasons left little doubt in my mind as to the nature of reality in the world. The last straw on the back of my moribund faith was my introduction to the extant astronomy and evolutionary biology. I intend to write about this – a mere allusion, as the field is unbelievably vast – in the concluding piece on this subject.