Chapter Two - Atheism v Religion

 In the debated about whether there is a God or not, atheists have relied on science to support their ideas, but this has proven to be a double-edged sword. Because science can be used to both disprove and prove the existence of God. Before the scientific revolution, atheists were few in number because they had no real alternative to the belief that God created the world. Then in the 17th century Isaac Newton formulated his three laws of motion. Through these laws he was able to show how the planets moved around the Sun and not by the, “hand of God” as previously thought, but by scientific and mathematical laws. This proved to be a big boost to atheism.

The irony of this; is that Newton was no atheists, he was a committed Christian and wrote more about theology in his lifetime, than he did about science. He even dabbled in alchemy. But his three laws of motion, were used by atheists to try and prove God didn’t exist. Where they claimed that the workings of the universe could all be explained by scientific laws and there was no need for divine intervention. But Newton responded to this by saying:

Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.

But some scientists took Newton’s original ideas much further and formed the concept of the; Clockwork Universe. Unfortunately, the end result of this, was a deterministic model of the universe, which claims that free-will was an illusion, because everything is predetermined. But the French philosopher Voltaire wrote: I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker. So the Clockwork Universe theory ended up as a argument for God, as he would be the clockmaker.

But atheism had another boost in the 19th century, with the theory of evolution, formulated by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace. Which according to this theory; animals and humans were not created by God but by evolution. Where life started as tiny microorganisms and evolved through natural selection. As more successful mutations of living things survived and kept on breeding and the less successful mutations die out and become extinct. So through this process, life evolved to more complex forms of life, like human beings. Richard Dawkins has become the most vocal supporter of evolutionary theory in recent times. But he not only promotes evolution but attacks religion in a book called; The God Delusion, where he gives his opinion about God in the Old Testament of the Bible and doesn’t hold back:

..arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

Something I have to agree with, although I don’t know why he also didn’t mention sexism as well in this diatribe. I think atheism is preferable to the very negative world view we have, when we believe in a judgemental and punitive male God. When we look today at Christian and Muslim countries we have a huge gap between rich and poor where it seems many government care little for the people they rule. But atheist Communist Chinese has taken hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty. So even though Communist China is a staunchly atheist country they are demonstrating far more care and compassion for their own people, than so called Christian countries. As Jesus taught: By their fruits ye shall know them. Matthew 7:16, American Standard Version.

But I also believe that just because religions give God a bad name by portraying God as a psychopathic manic, to frighten people. It doesn’t prove that God doesn’t exist. The true God is not the God portrayed by patriarchal religions. So although I would agree with Dawkins, that the God of the Old Testament doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a God that is very dissimilar to what is portrayed in the Old Testament. Because I believe that the true nature of God, is very different from any God portrayed by patriarchal religions.

Some scientific minded people who believe in God, have agreed with the theory of evolution but then claim that this was God’s way of creating life. We see this in theories like; Intelligent Design. Which Wikipedia calls pseudoscientific, but to give the other side of this argument I’ll quote Michael Denton from his book; Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Where he writes:

The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.

Dawkins is of course opposed to theories like this and has tried to answer them in his book, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. Where he said in his book:

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.

As previously mentioned Dawkins is that his first book, The Selfish Gene, seems to suggest that it is selfishness that drives evolution. As the result, some people have used his book to justify Social Darwinism and laissez-faire economics. Both of which are associated with extreme right wing politics, Fascism and Nazism. So because of this criticism, in the second edition of his book; The Selfish Gene. Dawkins added a chapter called, Nice Guys Finish First, which argues that evolution often favours co-operative behaviour.

He also produced in 1986 a BBC TV film which is also called; Nice Guys Finish First. Showing how co-operation does benefit all species of animals including humans. A lot of the film concentrates on a game called; the prisoner's dilemma. Where both players cannot talk to each other but can win the most points, if they are able to co-operate with the other person. But the catch is, that if one person tries to be cooperative and the other doesn’t. Then the uncooperative player will win most points. It turned out that the winning strategy was called; tit for tat, where a player starts off being co-operative with the other player, but retaliates if the other player doesn’t co-operate. Dawkins in the film also talks about what happened in the trenches of World War One. The trenches of both sides, were so close the British and German soldiers were able to communicate with one another. So they co-operated with each other, to make the fighting between them, less brutal than it needed to be.

Personally, my criticism of; Darwin’s theory of evolution, The Selfish Gene and even of the TV film, Nice Guys Finish First, is that they see everything from a masculine point of view. It should be obvious that the most important player in the survival of any species, is the mother. In any species the male is expendable, because if most males die, but all the females survive, the species can still survive. But if most females die but all the men survive, the species is in serious trouble. The reason for this, is that females give birth.

So even if a species has a ratio of one male to twenty females, one male can still fertilize twenty females or more, so all the females can still produce young. But if it’s the other way around and there are one female to twenty males. Then, as only a very few females can give birth, the species is in danger of extinction. So the female is always far more important that the male, in the survival of any species, because she is the one that give birth. But just as important, she also cares for the young, before it reaches maturity. So mothers are instrumental in protecting and nurturing most animals when their very young. At the time when they are most vulnerable to starvation and predation. But you wouldn’t think that, if you read the books of Charles Darwin or Richard Dawkins. Who focus far more on the role of the male, rather than the female.

But feminine behaviour also undermines Dawkins’ selfish gene argument, because the female in being able to care for her young; cannot be selfish. This is because a selfish mother who doesn’t care about her young, makes it very unlikely that her offspring will survive. It seems that Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene, recognized this problem and decided to rename mothers “bearers” instead of “carers”. Which seems to downgrade the role of the female to some sort of, put upon slave, rather than a loving and nurturing mother.

Fortunately, some academic women have fought back have have written about evolution from a woman’s point of view. The first was The Descent of Woman by Elaine Morgan, published in1972. And; Woman's Evolution by Evelyn Reed, published in 1975. Then more recently; Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, by Cat Bohannon published 2023.

An example of the maternal instinct is a sign we use to see on the safety information card located in the seat-back pocket of airline seats. What it said was that if the aircraft is damaged and the air escapes out of the fuselage. Then, oxygen masks will automatically fall down from the lockers above and the passengers must put on the oxygen masks as quickly as possible. But mothers are warned that they must put on their own oxygen masks before they put an oxygen mask on her children. This is because airline companies know that the natural instinct of mothers, is to put the care for her children before her own needs. So if a mother puts on the masks of her children first and then becomes unconscious or dies from lack of oxygen, then she cannot continue to care for her children. (Nowadays the word, mother, on these safety cards has been changed to, parent).

There are many more example like this: Like in the siege of Stalingrad during World War Two, a high number of mothers died when the food was strictly rationed. This was because too many mothers fed most of their meagre rations to their children, and as the result; these mothers were first to die of starvation. The maternal instinct is so strong that mothers of many species of animals will care for the young of other species. The most famous case of this is Romulus and Remus the mythological founders of Rome who were abandoned by their mother but was cared for by a she-wolf. But even if this story is fiction. There are many documented cases of small children being lost or abandoned. Then survived, when cared for by female wolves, dogs, monkeys and even unlikely animals like female bears, sheep and goats.

Many wildlife rehabilitation centres use both human and animal surrogate mothers to care for young animals brought to them. Most of the time, the animal mothers used to care for a young animal will be of the same species. But in some cases; if surrogate mother of the same species cannot be found, then a animal mother of another species is used, and they will still care for the young animal. While women will gladly volunteer to care for any young animal brought to them. But also human mothers will adopt and care for children not related to themselves. Women will also care for the sick and elderly, this is why the caring professions are dominated by women.

Facts like these undermine Dawkins selfish gene theory, because if women are caring for children not related to themselves, and animal mothers will do the same. Then clearly it’s not the desire to pass on their genes to the next generation, that is motivating mothers. It is instead the maternal instinct. Like we see in both human and animal mothers. It’s true that some men are reluctant to care for children not related to themselves. But there are also men who are also reluctant to care for children, whom they know are their own children. And will leave his wife or girlfriend when she is pregnant or just after she has given birth.

It’s true that lions will kill cubs of lionesses that are not related to them. But this is only about the behaviour of male lions and not all males of all species. There are men who are able to care for step-children, not related to themselves. Then there is also the cuckoo bird which lays it’s eggs in the nest of other birds, who then feed the cuckoo chick. So these birds both the males and females were caring for chicks of another species, not related to themselves. All this suggests that the selfish gene theory might somehow work for male lions, but not all males and certainly not for females.

Not that any of this proves that the theory of evolution is wrong. It just demonstrates the male centric bias in men, who advocate this theory. However, atheism doesn’t just rely on the theory of evolution to prove that God doesn’t exist, it also uses the Big Bang theory. Where scientists theorised that universe exploded out of nothing 13.8 billion years ago. Although this sounds a bit unlikely, many scientists prefer it to the two alternatives: That the universe is infinite and has no beginning or end, or that universe was created by God. A ironic fact, is that one of the first people to propose the Big Bang theory was a 19th century Christian priest Georges Lemaître who was also a mathematician. Although it has to be admitted that not all scientists are atheists. The most famous two scientists, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, both believed in God, as do many other scientists.

But for a while, the Atheists thought they had it all sown up: science they claimed, had proven that God didn’t exist. But although science did seemed to prove this; through Newton’s laws of Motion, the theory of Evolution and the Big Bang theory, it also produced; the Gaia hypothesis, the fine-tuned universe and quantum physics, which seems to prove the opposite. That an intelligence created our planet and the universe. So what are these theories that seem to prove in the existence of God? We will start with the Gaia hypothesis, which although is the weakest argument for God it’s also the easiest to understand, where to quote from the internet:

The Gaia hypothesis proposes that Earth's living organisms and their inorganic surroundings interact as a complex, self-regulating system that functions similarly to a single organism.

It was first proposed by a British scientist called James Lovelock, in the 1970s with the help of American scientist Lynn Margulis. At the time Lovelock was working for NASA, which was working on sending the first space craft to Mars to find out if there was life on Mars. Lovelock proposed we can discover this by comparing the Marian atmosphere with Earth’s atmosphere. Mars’s atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, while Earth’s atmosphere has a large amounts of oxygen and methane, both gases that are produced by life. So he pointed out; we don’t need to send a spacecraft to Mars to find out if it has life. We can find out by looking at its atmosphere with a telescope. Something NASA was probably not thrilled about, as they were trying to persuade politicians to give them the finance to send spacecraft to Mars.

Lovelock then realised that the gases on both Venus and Mars were very stable, but Earth had gases like oxygen and methane that were volatile because they reacted to other gases; animal and plant life; and even rocks. Yet these gases remained in the Earth’s atmosphere for hundreds of millions of years. He then realised that if life that produced both oxygen and methane. Then it was life that was regulating the amount of oxygen and methane in our atmosphere. Since life appeared on our planet and started to produce oxygen, the oxygen in our atmosphere has fluctuated. At present oxygen is 21% of the Earth atmosphere but if it was to go up to 25%, it would be impossible to extinguish any forest fire, until it burns itself out. But if oxygen was to go below 15%, most animals on the Earth would die. So the oxygen balance in our atmosphere is very critical and it is plant and animal life that do this. It does seem that millions of years ago oxygen levels in our atmosphere was a lot higher than today. It went up to approximately 35%, around 280 million years ago during the Carboniferous period. But this wasn’t a real problem as carbon dioxide levels were also higher, and this gas can smother fires. Like we see in modern fire extinguishers that uses carbon dioxide to put out flames.

The basis of Lovelocks theory; is that all the living organisms on Earth interacts with each other in a self-regulating system. A simple example, of this is that animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. While plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. So we have a cycle where animals are dependent on plants to make oxygen, and plants are dependent on animals to make carbon dioxide. There is also the bees and plants relationship, where bees pollinate plants while plants grow flowers that have nectar and pollen in them, that feed the bees. But life on our planet is more complicated than that. For instance, there is the nitrogen cycle. Nitrogen is vital for life, as life needs it to makes amino acids. But although we breathe in nitrogen, our bodies cannot process nitrogen gas. However, bacteria in the soil can do this and can convert nitrogen gas into ammonium and nitrates. Then plants can feed on these chemicals and we absorb them into our bodies, when we eat plants. There are many other cycles where plants and animals are dependent on each other for our survival. There is another nitrogen cycle in the oceans, while there is also the carbon, sulphur and phosphorus cycles.

Lovelock suggests that all life on Earth are interconnected and function as a single, self-regulating system, much like a living organism. For instance when life first got stared four billion years ago the energy from the sun was between 25 – 30% cooler than it is today. But the surface temperature of Earth in all that time, remained the same. This was because when life first got stared on Earth, the atmosphere was mostly the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. But as the sun warmed up, then life took out greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Mostly in the form of sea-shell where marine organisms use carbon dioxide to make their shells and when they die, many of the shells sink to the bottom of the ocean and the carbon dioxide in the shells stays there. Keeping the Earth’s temperature within liveable margins.

The name Gaia was suggested by the novelist William Golding. He was a friend of Lovelock and suggested he names his theory after Gaia, the Ancient Greek Earth Mother. It has taken a long time for the theory to gain scientific acceptance and even today many scientists still reject it. But it is more popular with people outside of science.

Lovelock didn’t create this theory on his own, he had a unknown collaborator called Dian Hitchcock. It seems while he was working for NASA they were lovers and the theory came out of the many discussions they had together. But only James Lovelock gets the credit for the theory which suggests it is another case of another male scientist taking credit for the work of his female college. Like in the infamous case of James Watson and Francis Crick wining the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the DNA double helix. After stealing data from a female scientist Rosalind Franklin, then publishing it before she did. But it may not be as bad as that; the Gaia hypothesis is very controversial, so it is very unlikely to win a Nobel prize. Also, Lovelock has had to put up with a lot of criticism from other scientists. Dian Hitchcock may not have wanted that and let Lovelock take both the credit and the criticism. Another factor could be that Lovelock was married, while he had a relationship with Dian Hitchcock and that might be another reason. The other female collaborator Lynn Margulis also seemed to have stepped back into the background, perhaps also because of the criticism the theory receives.

Many scientist don’t like this theory, because it suggests there is an intelligence that is guiding life on Earth. For this reason Lovelock tried to deny this. Then to make the theory scientifically acceptable to atheist scientists, he proposed the Daisyworld concept. This is an imaginary world of only two plants; black and white daisies. Where black daisies absorb light and warm the planet, while white daisies reflect light and cool the planet. If the temperature of the Earth heats up, the black daisies will die first because they are absorbing the Sun’s heat. So the white daisies will take over and cool the planet. If the opposite happens and the planet cools down the black daisies will more likely to survive as they are absorbing heat and they will take over and heat up the planet. But many scientists are still not convinced by this and are still very critical of this idea. Probably because the simplicity of the Daisyworld is very far removed from the extreme complexity and interconnectedness, of life on our planet.

The Gaia hypothesis is controversial is other ways, as it has been involved in the Global Warming controversy and can be used by either side of the debate, to push their agenda. Lovelock got involved in his debate with his book: The Revenge of Gaia, to associate the Gaia hypothesis with supporting the greenhouse-warming theory, but has since backed away from this.

This might be because on the other side of the debate, they agree with Lovelock that before life got started on our planet, the majority of our atmosphere was carbon dioxide. Then as the sun became warmer, life has been taking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere to cool down the Earth. But claim, life may have been too successful in taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Because in the last 34 million years, there has been an increasing number of ice ages. So the planet has not been warming up, but over the last 34 millions of years, it’s instead been cooling down.

The global warming sceptics also point out that there has been times in the past, where the North and South poles have been free of ice. They also point out that carbon dioxide is now just a trace gas and only makes up only 0.04% of the Earth’s atmosphere. But carbon dioxide is essential for life, as all life on Earth is carbon-based. So if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere was become too low, and it’s very low now, then all plant life on Earth will die. Which means, both animals and humans will have very little to eat and we will have mass starvation on our planet. Basically, carbon dioxide is plant food and we see this in modern greenhouses that boost the amount of carbon dioxide in the air of their green houses, to increase plant growth.

Another disputed point, is that the most potent greenhouse gas is not carbon dioxide but water vapour. However water vapour can heat up the atmosphere in the form of humidity, but cool it down in the form of cloud cover. But it gets very complicated, because how much cooling or warming you get with clouds, depends on whether you have high or low clouds. High wispy white clouds, (Cirrus clouds) tend to warm up the atmosphere while thicker low clouds, will shade the ground and reflect incoming solar radiation back into space, which has a cooling effect. Along with this, is that clouds also give us rain. So that if the Earth does warm up, we will have greater evaporation from the oceans, which will result in increasing rainfall and more plant growth. While more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will also help plants to grow. So it’s a very complicated subject and not even the most powerful computers we have, can’t work out all these extremely complex interactions.

The Gaia hypothesis is also controversial in religions. Some Christians completely reject it as being pagan. But others have noted the similarities between Jesus’ teachings on unconditional love and the Gaia hypothesis showing us the interconnectedness of all life on our planet. But of course the interconnectedness of all life is a feminine concept. So William Golding did a good job in naming it Gaia, after the Ancient Greek Earth Mother. This suggests it’s just another proof that the nature of God is female, even if it’s just on the Earth level. But although the Gaia hypothesis points to a guiding intelligence protecting life on Earth. The fine-turned universe theory does the same for the whole universe, while quantum physics suggests that the whole universe is more mind than matter.

The problem is that although the Big Bang theory, the theory of evolution and the Gaia hypothesis can be understood by any reasonable intelligent people, who are not scientists. The same cannot be said, of both the fine-tuned universe theory or quantum physics. Where they’re difficult to understand for anyone who is not a scientist. This is why so many of the general public are not aware of either of them. But both are the strongest proof of the existence of God that we have, and this is why it’s important to try to have some understanding of both of them.