ATHEISM: A Giant Leap of Faith | Part 2

How did it all start? There are three possibilities for explaining the beginning of our existence: First Possibility: We are created, or came into being, without the agency of a creator.

• Our innate knowledge tells us that every previously non-existing effect must have a pre-existing cause.

In fact, there is no stronger generalization known to mankind than causality. It is the basic premise of all scientific activity. If you deny causality, you are denying reason and science. If I claim that the Eiffel Tower just popped into place, would anyone believe me? No, because it goes against our a priori basic truths. Why did this “from nothing to something” phenomena stop after the beginning of universe?  Why aren’t things continuously popping into existence without a cause nowadays? Why and when did this magic stop?

• Order cannot come from random events.

Sir Roger Penrose is an English physicist, mathematician, and philosopher of science with contributions to the mathematical physics of general relativity and cosmology. He has received several prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics, which he shared with Stephen Hawking for the Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems.  Penrose  calculated the probability for our specific universe to come into being randomly from all possible outcomes of the Big Bang as 1 out of 1010¹²³. According to Penrose: “This number tells us how precise the Creator’s aim must have been.” (https://creationofuniverse.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/the-maths-of-probability/, para. 10) If we sit on the beach and watch waves ruffle patterns in the sand for 100 years, will any of the countless waves we see ever create a sandcastle?   Never!   However, a small child with intelligence can create a sandcastle. So, intelligence is needed for order, even for a  simple structure like a sandcastle. How about this universe which runs according to precise patterns, orbits, and fixed laws? How about the amazing design and complex systems in creation? Any fair-minded person who sees the below diagram of the bacterial flagellum  —which is the tiny hair-like helical structure responsible for the motility of bacteria— will immediately determine that it was designed with intelligence, and that it did not come together randomly… Figure 1: The Bacterial Flagellum (https://www.onlinebiologynotes.com/bacterial-flagella-structure-types-function/) …That is, unless you want to go out of your way to ignore the obvious. Richard Dawkins, in his book, The Blind Watchmaker, wrote: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose,” (Dawkins, R. (1986), The Blind Watchmaker, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, p. 1) Thereafter, he devotes a large part of his book to warn us against trusting our perceptions of purpose in design! Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist, who co-discovered the structure of the DNA molecule, wrote in his 1990 book What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery p. 138: “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.” (https://darwinianfundamentalism.blogspot.com/2013/11/biologists-must-constantly-keep-in-mind.html ) Look how contrived atheism is: it requires us to suppress our intuitive knowledge and blind ourselves to the obvious!

• Some argue that, in Quantum Mechanics, something can come out of nothing. The “nothing” in Quantum mechanics is actually something: a quantum vacuum in a field of time and space which contains small amounts of energy and produces only virtual particles, not real matter. Accordingly to theoretical physicist Matt Strassler:

“A virtual particle is not a particle.” A “virtual particle,” generally, is a disturbance in a field that will never be found on its own, but instead is something that is caused by the presence of other particles, often of other fields. (https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/virtual-particles-what-are-they/) Per the “Stand to Reason” website: “Krauss and Hawking have not explained how you can get a universe from nothing. Rather, they take something —quantum field vacuum states— call it nothing and then confidently declare that you can get something from nothing. Yet, all they have done is explain how to get something from something.” (https://www.str.org/w/a-universe-from-nothing, Last para.) Second Possibility: We created ourselves and the universe which we inhabit.  Let’s state some facts:

• We came into existence at some point in time.
• We were non-existent before that point in time.
• Whoever created us must have existed at the time of our creation in order to create us.

Therefore, for us to create ourselves,in a state of non-existence and existence simultaneously, which is self-contradictory and logically indefensible, so we can reject this second explanation. Third Possibility: Someone or something created us: an Intelligent, All-Powerful Force created us and our Universe. Accordingly, whoever brought us into existence must be our ‘Creator’: the one Whom we call ‘God.’   Who else claims to have created the universe, including Earth, and Man? No-one except the self-proclaimed Creator. Nobody disputes His claim. No one else claims His title. God’s claim is unique and unchallenged. So, why not consider it seriously? We have no comprehensive explanation for our existence and the existence of the Universe without a Creator.  None of the “Theories of Everything” floating around in the scientific community can explain the cause for the universe or the purpose of existence, nor do they lay claim to any creation.  All things considered, it makes perfect sense, as we will show in this series, to accept our Creator’s claim.

Do you know anyone [else] worthy of His name?  (Quran 19:65)

If we have a roomful of a thousand men and one child, and only one man claims to be the father, nobody disputes his claim. Should we follow unproven hypotheses put forth by human beings —in essence no different from us?  Or is it wiser to follow the unchallenged claim from our Creator? “It takes more faith to believe that there’s no God than it does to believe that there is a God… Because it makes more sense that something created the universe than that the universe created itself”  –William Maillis, an eleven year old. (https://faithit.com/11-year-old-genius-prove-stephen-hawking-wrong-death-god-exist/) Belief  in a creator is not the enemy of reason. Rather, well-founded belief is the basis of reason. In what follows we will review some of the stumbling blocks along the road to faith, while showing that belief in God is consistent with all the sound sources of knowledge.

…To be continued in Part 3