This blog post explores how the existence of God and human beliefs have changed as science and society have evolved, and looks at some of the key debates that have arisen along the way.
Are you religious, and if so, do you believe in the existence of God? Humanity has a long history of believing in religion, and it is deeply connected to human nature. While the existence of God has changed with time and doctrine, humans have always believed in something unknowable. In the distant past, prehistoric peoples worshipped nature and believed in the sky as their god, and even after the advent of writing and the development of human intellect, gods still existed. From the various mythologies of the ancient world to the three modern religions of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, which are practiced by millions of people, there have been many different religions and many more gods. So if you believe in religion, do you also believe in the existence of an invisible God?
The search for the existence of God is as old and complex as the history of faith itself. And the search for God has always been linked to science. In the beginning, gods were natural phenomena like lightning and fire. Over time, beliefs morphed into attributing personhood to natural objects, and the gods thus created were embodied in the form of myths. But as science became more capable of interpreting natural phenomena, no longer could any natural figure be called a god.
With the development of science, the role of gods began to diminish. As humans gradually understood natural phenomena, they were able to replace the role of God with scientific explanations. This raised new questions about the existence of God. For example, why should humanity suffer and be miserable if there is a good God? These questions led to the questioning of God’s attributes, especially omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence.
The logic of denying omniscience is very simple. If God is omnipotent, he should be able to create a rock that he cannot lift. However, if God could create such a rock, he would no longer be omnipotent. On the other hand, if God cannot create such a rock, then God is not omnipotent. This logic has become an important way to deny the existence of God.
The next line of questioning has been around since the Middle Ages. The question, “Why would a good God allow humanity to suffer from various plagues?” has been discussed in the world of faith for a long time. However, these problems have been dismissed as God’s trials of humans, or as explanations for the existence of evil.
These logics were used to deny the existence of God, but they were still not enough to deny God’s existence completely. This is where scientific logic came in. The theory of evolution was proposed by Darwin, which set the stage for science to replace God’s role in creationism. The most famous explanation of creationism is the story of the watchmaker. Can a clock be made “by chance” in nature? Most people would say no, because a watch is a very sophisticated product, and one would think that it would not be made by chance. Therefore, the logic goes, it’s impossible for humans, who are more sophisticated than watches, to be created by chance. Evolutionary theory, however, challenges this idea head-on, providing a way to explain human existence without the existence of God.
The Big Bang theory also explained the birth of the universe. The geocentric theory, which states that God created the earth as the center of the universe, also lost its place with the advent of the heliocentric theory. The facts that used to prove the existence of God no longer serve as evidence as science develops, but rather as evidence to deny the existence of God. The fossilized fish on the mountain was considered evidence of Noah’s Ark, but in modern times, it became the basis for the theory of plate tectonics.
In this way, the means of proving the existence of God have become increasingly scarce in modern times. Of course, there are still phenomena that science cannot explain. Many of the phenomena and beings that are still unknown may be the role of science in the future, or they may prove to be evidence for the existence of God. But we still cannot see God, we cannot feel God, and we cannot even predict God’s existence, which is the previous problem. The certainty of God’s existence is still unclear, and that is why we will continue to interpret and confirm the existence of God with reason and science until the moment when we find out.
