Magnum opus

  I should’ve written this long ago, and having spoken to many religious people online, I finally realised it.

  First of all, let me explain what I believe in: I am an athiest. I am a strict atheist. I firmly believe in the inexistence of any form of deity; being an atheist doesn’t mean I simply don’t belong to any organised religion, and certainly not that I ‘don't believe in anything’. (In fact, atheism is a rather broad umbrella term, but I shan’t go into it. You can look it up for yourselves.)

  ‘Why are you an atheist?’

  Because science goes nearer and nearer to proving that there is most likely no God. Everything is controlled by mathematics. Think about it: The laws of physics, chemistry, biology, &c. are all derived from it. The laws of math cannot be broken, even if there were a God. Can He draw a circle with a circumference that is not 2πr (r=the circle's radius). Sir Isaac Newton thought that the complexity of the Newton's law of universal gravity and its application to everything proves that ‘only a fool won't acknowledge His existance’ (or something idiotic of the sort), but later generations came to realise that this is far from being a proof of His existence (so if you were planning on saying that ‘scientists come to believe in God’, think again, and this time consider the fact that Stephen Hawking is agnostic-atheist).

  ‘Alright... Then who do you think made the world? Look at this computer you're using. Who made it? Naturally, you’d come to the conclusion something this complex had to be made out of forethought!’

  Funny, that was just about to be my next argument. This computer I’m using now was made by a human whose brain had chemicals running through it in a way that made him create the computer (I know that’s not exactly how it happened, but you get the point). He (let’s assume He’s male, just for comfort’s sake) was the result of his parents having sex, who are the result of their parents having sex, back in generations till you reach the common ancestors humans and monkeys shared (yes, there was such an ancestor. It’s been proven, and in fact, most people I know who doubt it are a living proof of the theory), then you go back to the previous step in evolution, back in time, back in steps, till you reach the first single-cell life-form on planet Earth, according to the laws of probability, biology, and chemistry. Besides, think of rocks on the sea shore: If you saw, among all the rocks there, a rock of perfect circular shape, you would believe it were the one created by a human, but in fact, it’s the other rocks that have a more complex shape. Simplicity implies forethought.

  ‘So how was that first single-cell life-form created?’

  It developed on the planet because the conditions were sufficient. The conditions were different from place to place and affected different animals differently, and that is why not all life-forms in the world are humans. It’s all a matter of chance following laws. The same applies for the creations of planet Earth and any other planet: They are just many particles following the laws of physics, that have been making them spread away from the location of the Big Bang and form planets. As evidence, think of the planets around you: Are there any life-forms on them? Not that man has discovered so far. That’s because the conditions happened to be different, and our planet happened to be the one planet with the outstandingly improbable conditions required to create life-forms. Think about a die with 5,000 sides, one of which is red and the rest are white, and throw it 5,000 times. Most likely you'll get the red side up only once, according to the laws of probability. Also, it is quite likely that there are other life-forms somewhere else in the universe, same way you'll get the red side up if you throw the die 10,000 times.

  ‘So who made those particles?’

  I believe that the particles were there, well, just because. I can ask you who made God. If you go back and back like that, you’ll never stop. What differs me from theists/deists is the assumption that the first ‘because’ step is the existence of the primal particles, instead of the assumption there is some sort of supreme being that is able to create matter/antimatter and energy (which, as far as I understood, are convertible into one another; I am no scientist, and what I am basing my beliefs on is the mostly common knowledge I possess of science) out of nothing. But my belief dismisses entirely the assumption of an entity superior to mathematics, because this just doesn’t make sense (as I've demonstrated with the Circle Argument above).

  And yet, perhaps there might be something superior to mathematics. Maybe that is the limit of my human capacity to comprehend. I really hate to think that. But who knows. Also, phenomena and events in our universe are affected by so many factors that there might be a divine intervention among them. I started thinking about it when I tried applying the above theory to free will and thought: If all our actions are a result of chemicals in our brains, how can we have free thought? Mathematics is a prison for us. Then I started thinking what could our conscience be made of besides simple chemicals, and came to think of some sort of radiation, with a frequency much below or above what is known to us, created by some chemicals inside one’s brain, or something like that. I began to think that perhaps this is how God, assuming he exists, affects the world―radiation. I started thinking how reincarnation can take place, and thought that perhaps it is projected into newborn infants at death. Maybe there’s some sort of magnet that takes in this radiation, which can also be the source of telepathy... Who knows. I certainly don’t; I really don’t know much about this subject.

  So, I explained why my idea of atheism is about as likely as the idea of theism, if not more. Though I haven’t succeeded in proving it beyond doubt, I have to break a few myths regarding the (first) three Abrahamic religions (I'm not talking about the Druze, because I know nothing of their religion) and prove them wrong:

  The Old Testament is actually a book filled with politics and foreign influences. The book of Kings, for instance, is far from being a historical book. It’s true that it has a grain of truth, but the real story is twisted around to suit political or religious agenda. A classic example is king Ahab, king of Israel, who was a king of a very powerful kingdom (at least military-wise, as can be learnt from the Battle of Qarqar), but the Bible doesn’t mention this, and displays him as some childish weakling instead. Also, you can see how the writer of the book tried to advocate a concentrated worship in Jerusalem, and tried to demonstrate (by twisting facts around) how a God-fearing king brings wealth to future generations, and the reverse. That is why it’s said that king Ahab eventually repented and was forgiven. Now, while Kings tries to show that one’s suffering is the result of one’s ancestors actions, Chronicles tries to show that one's suffering is caused by one's own actions, because during the Babylonian exile, people stopped caring for their actions, thinking they'd suffer regardless (Chronicles was an attempt to change this method of thought). That is why Chronicles describes the kings of Israel and Judea entirely differently: Solomon’s sins, for instance, are not mentioned in Chronicles.

  The Pentateuch also includes many human fallacies: It tries to deliberately show how the Jewish God is greater than the Babylonian gods. For instance, the only animal given namely in the first creation myth (have a look at the two first chapters of Genesis and you'll see each chapter has a different creation myth) is the crocodile, because the crocodile was an enemy of the Babylonian gods. It's as if the writer were saying, ‘Hah! Your gods had to fight the crocodiles, but our god is their master! He’s the master of the whole world!!’ This attitude, by the way, is far more apparent in the creation descriptions given by the prophets.

  One more note: It is said that ‘[T]he Bible spoke in men’s tongue’, meaning that the Bible was written in a language humans can understand, using expressions people used on a daily basis at the time, and that is why the prophets and even the Pentateuch often personificate God or use foreign metaphors to explain their point better. But still, almost all (if not all) modern Bible researchers today would agree that the Pentateuch’s language and difference between the laws shows that it was not written as a whole, although the Pentateuch itself says that it was given wholly when the Israelites wandered in the desert (for instance, Deutronomy talking about care for Leviites shows that it was written at a time of concentrated worship, when the Leviite priests who worked in little worshipping places across the countries were unemployed poverts). I, for one, find some parts of the prophecies much harder to read than Genesis, which is dated as the last book in the Pentateuch. Why would God decide to give the Israelites a book in a language that would only be used in a few centuries as a book of laws?

  The Qur’án, however, should be noted as a book that states it shows the ‘true’ word of God, cleansed of politics and foreign influences, yet the Qur’án too states that Evolution did not take place (Jewish tradition can somehow comply with it, and the UCC relies on Psalms 139 which can be seen as very subtly hinting at it). Muhammad was quoted as saying, ‘The male semen is white and the female semen is yellowish. When the two meet and the male semen overpowers the female semen, it will be male; when the female semen overpowers the male semen, it will be female,’ and, ‘He is created of both, the semen of the man and the semen of the woman. The man’s semen is thick and forms the bones and the tendons. The woman's semen is fine and forms the flesh and blood.’ This, mind you, is a sahíh quote from the Hadíth (see here for yourself). Besides, the Qur’án starting mostly with scaring people and the constant reminder of the importance of faith instead of actual proof given (try reading the first súra in the Qur’án after súrati ’l-fátiha). This is pretty much Q.E.D.: ‘Yahweh’ is a lie.

  This way or another, we're all back at square one. Now we just have to hope science will bring us to light and reveal the gods’ existence or inexistence once and for all.

  Unum diem...