Who Created Who?

The “intellectuals” and “truly informed” personalities of today, tell us that belief in God is a flimsy hypothesis which has no credibility on the grounds of reasoning. With this understanding, many people have proposed different theories regarding how religion and belief in God was created by society. I, on the other hand, believe that those who reject the belief in God have no evidence for what they claim. In fact, I believe the evidence points in the opposite direction of what is commonly thought. So, is it really reasonable to think that the belief in a Creator is a myth? Or that religion was just cooked up by someone who might have wanted to exercise his power over people? Well, let’s put these questions to the test by examining them with a closer eye.

I always hear people say, “If I can't see God, then how can I believe in Him?” This shaky argument is surprisingly still the basis of thought for many atheists in the scientific community. Science is limited to the five senses. Therefore, it can never tell us anything about matters that are beyond sense perception. For example, questions of morality and human values are outside of the scope of science. It is a field that reveals a partial knowledge of our reality, but too many of us get fooled into thinking it is the sole criterion for truth. Since, God is a being beyond sense perception, how can we use our senses as a tool for determining whether He exists or not?

Another common reason for opposing religion is that it is used as a tool for propaganda and a means to gather people under the flag of fear. By creating the notion of an after-life where the wrong-doers will be punished, one can control the behavior of the masses. This is hardly evidence of the creation of religion by society. First of all, this assumes that religions are fundamentally based around fear and it is because of this fear that people follow a religion and behave morally. This couldn't be further from the truth. Ask an adherent of any religion why he/she has faith. You will hardly ever hear “because I am scared”. Talk to a Christian and they will tell you that love is what drives them towards religion rather than fear.

Besides, is fear the only way to get people to behave? Doesn’t a person naturally feel good when he gives to the needy or does some other good action? So why does fear need to be used to propagate good? If everyone decided not to help society and only look after personal interests, humanity would be doomed. I would argue that education could also be used as a means to rectifying behavior. One could teach the people that acting solely on self-interest will lead to the destruction of society as a whole. Education would be a better alternative than using fear as the tool. So why would anyone go through the trouble of creating a complex religious dogma?

Although, it’s possible to deny the truth of a particular religion, it is irrational to deny the existence of certain people in the past who claimed to be prophets. The principle of probability allows us to realize that certain events must have taken place in history. For example, millions of people have written and spoken about the wars of past, so we can be sure that these wars did indeed take place. It is improbable and illogical for us to think that all these people were involved in some big conspiracy in which they all joined hands in lying to us. What are the odds? Using the same reasoning, we have to admit the existence of personalities such as Jesus and Muhammad who promoted certain messages. How can such an enormous amount of people write about the lives of these personalities, if they really didn’t exist? So let's reflect. The creators of religion decided they needed to tame the behavior of man. So someone volunteered to promote righteousness even in the face of persecution and torture. On top of this, entire communities walked behind these people ready to bear hardships and trials. If Jesus' only motive was to control the behavior of man, would he be willing to give his life for it? If Muhammad was a fiend for power, then why face persecution at the hands of the Arab tribes that lived in his time?

We often try to think about how religions could have been created by people, but have we ever questioned this very thinking? Where did the atheistic and anti-religious movements of today come from? One driving factor was the past resistance of the Christian elites to scientific research which led to the prosecution of great people like Galileo. This divorcing of religion and science is what led many good-intended people to turn their backs on religion because of its closed-mindedness to new discoveries. The mistake these people made was that they threw the baby out with the bath water and rejected any notion of a Creator, whatsoever.

So here we are today witnessing this great divide between science and religion. But does the scientific evidence really point towards a universe free from the need of a Creator? The prominent and most heavily backed theory regarding the origin of the universe is the big-bang theory. The theory of the universe being eternal has been completely disproven by science. The big-bang theory states that there was a big explosion which caused time, matter, and space to come into existence. Prior to this bang, there was nothing. So, let's examine what's being said. There was absolutely nothing and then a bang causes the universe to come into existence. The question of the day is “can something come out of nothing?” Have you ever seen a blob of nothingness flying 80 mph hit another blob of nothingness flying at 50 mph and boom! Something miraculously appears. Obviously, something had to have caused the bang...something outside of time, matter, and space; not physical but metaphysical; perhaps, a Creator or whatever name you would like to give it. Is this evidence or not? I'll let you decide.