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Creation or Random Evolution
This is a response to Nurul I. Mukul’s Article:
CREATION OR RANDOM EVOLUTION (April 10, 2001), By Avijit Roy Thanks for your thought-provocative article. I am also
quite attracted by your arguments, though I could not accept many of those
arguments for some reason, which I wish to explain one after another. You argued
that you believe in one almighty, supreme God who created our universe and the
creation, you tried to prove by mathematics that creation is not Random. You
also tried to bring complex dimensional mathematics space-time relationship) to
prove that human mind is limited to understand the existence of God. I will like
to answer one by one. Definition of God Mr. Mukul, with due respect I wish to
mention that it’s ok that you believe in one almighty (all-powerful?) god, but
unfortunately you like other believers did not provide any proper definition of
god. It is not surprising at all, cause, if you could define god, then we could
set up a test to test for the existence of this deity. Since you cannot define
it, and since we cannot test for it, it puts their god along with most of the
other gods and goddesses, beyond the pale of meaning. They are meaningless
constructs for me. Religion and God As you did not defined any definition of
God, I would like to take the definition expressed in different religion. Though
you confessed that you do not know if the religious scriptures is divine or not
I am asking you to focus on this matter because, you know that every religion
defines god in its own way. I will come back to your wants and poof - just like magic - it happens. He does not
require any mechanism, for nothing is impossible for Him. Nothing makes Him do
one thing instead of the other, because He can easily do anything, He is
unlimited and infinite. Muslims believe in only one God but Hindus believe in
thousands of god, goddess etc. You see there is no proper definition about what
actually this “god” means. You also could not give any proper definition,
just imposed some characteristics. Even the characteristics you imposed for god
is totally fallacious. Here is some of the glimpses of my rebuttal of the
characteristic of god regardless the religion you follow: Is God all-Powerful? “God is most powerful”—consider this statement. If I
ask—“Can he (god) create such a heavy rock that he himself cannot lift ?”
What will be your answer?
I phrased the question in somewhat more general terms, and
deliberately so. My question was whether God can set Himself a task He can’t
perform. This is a clear contradiction, which it only indicates that the
“all-powerful” is such a characteristic which is impossible to attain. Is God All loving? Again “God is All-loving”---is it
really true? Then why there are so many crimes, misdeeds, trespass, murder, and
outrage in our world (God’s Perfect world !!!!)? God is so powerful, but why
can’t he remove these irregularities? Some of you have argued that in this way
God it testing our morality and integrity!!! I gave an example from the recent
newspaper in my previous posting. “ A four year girl is gang-raped and
brutally killed by 5 archfiend men.” What’s the little girl’s sin, Can any
one tell? Why she had to pass under such a severe ruthless test of God? Testing
our morality!! Just think!!! What a Nobel being this “God” is, running such
kind of pervert tests!! I have raised three possibilities, which I am going to
provide you again for your concern. Actually god cannot remove such kind of irregularities
because of having one of the three
possibilities of the following:
Is God Omniscient? If your god knows everything, ideals of life and codes of
conduct have no significance.
For a god to be free in action then its future must not be
fully known in advance there must be the possibility for a change of mind. If a
god cannot freely alter its actions, then it cannot be said to be free. But this
means that the god itself cannot perfectly know its own future. There must be
true propositions about the future, which it does not know. The form of prayer, “Oh God, thy will be done,”
illustrates the attitude of total surrender of the individual to the god of his
faith. But individual freedom is a reality. Freedom means the capacity to choose between alternatives.
This choice we make in every act of our life. We plan, educate and grow moral
only because we can choose. If the future is determined, our planning is
meaningless. If the success or failure of a student is predetermined, efforts at
education lose meaning. If the judgment is foregone, arguments of advocates on
points of law are vain. If the pattern of behavior of an individual is
determined by god’s will, fate’s decree or by the force of circumstances,
ideals of life and codes of conduct have no significance. But real life contradicts the assumptions of determinism.
We hope, we plan, we act and we achieve. Our achievements may be influenced by
factors good, bad and indifferent around us. Yet our freedom to will and to do
is unquestionable. The greater the freedom an individual exercises, the nearer
the achievement to his desire. To call it a myth is to deceive ourselves in
order to justify an untenable faith in determinism. The experience of free will
and the aspirations for moral conduct, disprove the existence of an almighty god
or of a basic being which determine our life. We are free; god
and basic being, spiritual
or material are fictions. Common cosmological argument and God Believers always
provide the most common type of the cosmological argument, postulating a god as
a “First Cause” (which you think most
logical) can be summarized
thusly:
Theists always dogmatically believe that every creation
should have a creator and every event should have a cause. But practically it is
not true always. there are many events in this universe happening without the
need of prior cause or the involvement of the creator. There are many spontaneous reaction occurring without
having the anterior cause. Many radio-active particles are radiating freely and
spontaneously without involving the anticipation of any creator. If you are
familiar with quantum mechanics you may know that quantum electrodynamics
reveals that an electron, positron, and photon occasionally emerge spontaneously
in a perfect vacuum. When this happens, the three particles exist for a brief
time, and then annihilate each other, leaving no trace behind. (Energy
conservation is violated, but only for a particle lifetime DelT permitted by the
uncertainty delT * delE~h where delE is the net energy of the particles and h is
Planck’s constant.) The spontaneous, temporary emergence of particles from a
vacuum is called a vacuum fluctuation, and is utterly commonplace in quantum
field theory. A particle produced by a vacuum fluctuation has no cause. Since
vacuum fluctuations are commonplace, god cannot be the only thing that is
uncaused. So you see, your “God” is not the only thing uncaused in this
universe. So all the Theist’s argument (like Hugh Ross) “If the universe
arose out of a big bang, it must have had a beginning. If it had a beginning, it
must have a beginner.” also comes from the limitation of thinking. An Uncaused Universe The more important point is this: not
only is there no evidence for the theist’s causal assumption, there’s
evidence against it. The claim that the “beginning of our universe has a
cause” conflicts with current scientific theory. The scientific theory is
called the Wave Function of the Universe. It has been developed in the past 15 years or so by Stephen Hawking,
Andre Vilenkin, Alex Linde, and many others. Their theory is that there is a scientific law of nature
called the Wave Function of the Universe that implies that it is highly probable
that a universe with our characteristics will come into existence without a
cause. Hawking’s theory is based on assigning numbers to all
possible universes. All of the numbers cancel out except for a universe with
features that our universe possesses, such as containing intelligent organisms.
This remaining universe has a very high probability - near 100% - of coming into
existence uncaused. By the by, the fact is, if there is a god then god exists.
And then god exists without the need for a creator. So, those who always invoke
the need for a creator to account for the creation of universe claim, in the
same breath, that the “problem” of the creation of the universe is solved by
invoking something infinitely more complex than the universe—that wasn’t
created. Simply my objection of your arguments is that your
arguments conclude that a “god” exists, but if so, then this god must have a
cause (according to the same argument). This would result in an infinite regress
of causes (gods) unacceptable to the theist, so most believers make an exception
for their god, asserting that it doesn’t need a cause. Unfortunately, there is no obvious reason why this
exception cannot be applied to the universe, too. If a god “just is,” why
can’t the universe “just be?” For this reason, many using the argument say
“everything that begins to exist has a cause” - asserting that their god
never “began” and, hence, needs no cause. The problem here is that you did
not provide any support offered on behalf of your except the so-called
“popular belief” that your god must be “eternal.” From the law of
Physics we know that order cannot come from disorder; then this god must be
highly ordered rather than chaotic. Therefore, this god requires another god as
an explanation. Of course, this once again drops us into an infinite regress of
gods. If the believer wishes to exempt an ordered god from requiring
explanation, then they will have to demonstrate that the universe cannot also
get such an exemption and scientifically irrational. Statistical Randomness and God Mr. Mukul, You said, “Now if I add a process control in
tossing the coin which will result in bringing a head every time - then, the
head will appear 2 million times out of 2 million events (tossing). Therefore,
we can conclude, if we see any kind of pattern (not random) in a process, that
will imply the existence of a “control” or “bias” mechanism.” My question is how do you conclude that our universe is
that event that occurs 2 million times out of 2 million. Who told you that?
Isn’t it a biased assumption? The first, most common, and most obvious
objection to the whole family of design arguments is the fact that any god,
which would have been able to create the universe, would itself have to be
rather complex and certainly couldn’t be “accidental”. So, if the universe
and the human body is too complex to be accidental, what about this god? Who or
what created this god? Is he accidental also? The theist will normally respond
by claiming this god is a “necessary being” and doesn’t need a
“creator.” Unfortunately, this is totally unsupported and totally
unsupportable. There is no basis for such an arbitrary assertion, except to try
to excuse their god from the same standards they wish to apply to the universe.
However, any excuse made for this god can be equally work for the universe. Why
can’t the universe be “necessary” or not need a “creator?” No one can
say - after all, we really don’t
know enough about our universe
or universes in general to make such a judgment. In general, order and complexity are dependent upon
subjective judgments. Where one person may see order, another may see chaos.
Where one person may see indecipherable complexity, another may see elegant
simplicity. It would seem reasonable, then, to start out with a method
of objectively measuring order, complexity, and chaos so that we can tell how
much there is and whether or not that amount requires a Grand Designer. I have
yet to meet a theist willing to attempt such a task. We human beings think that
for development of life on earth oxygen, nitrogen optimum temperature is needed
and that is the order that god has imposed. Without such optimum environment we
think development of life was not possible on earth. But it is also a biased
assumption. As those conditions were favorable for development of human
beings, so we think this is the ONLY optimum condition. But it is NOT always
true. There are many species in this world, which survives without the need of
that favorable condition. Some bacteria survive in underground; some numerous
eukaryotic organisms are found in deep sea where there is very little oxygen.
Even in kerosene and petroleum oil some organic species can live and that is the
favorable condition for them, which is completely adverse for other organisms
such as humans. So it is not true that our earthly environment is the only and
only one favorable condition that god imposed and without it our evolution would
never be possible. What would a universe without order look like? May be
different. And our development may also then completely different. We may then
think that environment is the only environment for evolution! Who knows! I how
can you assume that their god is needed to impose the order? The simple response
is you cannot just guess. Human knowledge and God “You cannot judge the activities
of God by your limited knowledge” - this argument is given by the believers
when they fail to provide any logical expression on behalf of god. They just say
human mind is not capable to comprehend God (like two dimension species can
never comprehend three dimension). This kind of statement comes from ignorance.
Yet ignorance is never an argument and cannot be considered evidence in any
meaningful sense. How can they judge that human mind is limited when we have
already solved so many problems? As an intelligent being why can’t we question about the
existence of God? Why do they always want to limit our boundaries? Some people
argue that human knowledge is limited so that it is not possible to
conceptualize “God”. How could they be so sure? Have god come to them and
told? Nope. This is just their belief. If I have to accept their “limited
mind” logic then I have to believe not only in God but also in Santa Claus,
fairies, ogre, Zeus, unicorn, jin, fereshta .....everything. Cause, human
knowledge is so limited that we could not conceptualize such things
yet-----because may be they are all 4 dimensional species. As we are the
inferior inhabitants of 3 dimension, we can never conceptualize their existence
by any means !!!! Mr. Mukul, whatever mathematics you provide or whatever
dimensional analysis you do to make us believe that your God is not
comprehendible by our limited knowledge, It is clear that if God had created his
universe by his mighty power (which for very sure you tend to believe), He
should be quite capable to interact with his creation (i.e. universe). If God
interacts with our universe in any way, the effects of his interaction must have
some physical manifestation. Hence his interaction with our universe must be in
principle detectable. Where is such indication? If God is essentially non-detectable, it must therefore be
the case that he does not interact with our universe in any way. Many atheists
would argue that if God does not interact with our universe at all, it is of no
importance whether he exists or not. God can only watch when 4 year old girl is
being brutally raped ! If the Bible is to be believed, God was easily detectable
by the Israelites. Muhammed also traveled in space to see his God. So as
Judhisthir and Ram. Surely he should still be detectable today? Why has the
situation suddenly changed? Note that I am not demanding that God interact in a scientifically verifiable, physical way. I might potentially receive some revelation, some direct experience of God. An experience like that would be incommunicable, and not subject to scientific verification but it would nevertheless be as compelling as any evidence can be. But whether by direct revelation or by observation, it must surely be possible to perceive some effect caused by God’s presence; otherwise, how can I distinguish him from all the other things that don’t exist? You did not mention either.
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