ARGUMENTS AGAINST GOD AND RELIGION — Part I From Physical Sciences

arising from ignorance. With the spread of knowledge, this belief has automatically disappeared. Julian Huxley writes: Newton showed that God did not control the movements of the planets. Laplace in a famous aphorism affirmed that astronomy had no need of the god hypothesis; Darwin and Pasteur between them did the same for biology; and in our own century, the rise of scientific psychology and the extension of historical knowledge have removed gods to a position where they are no longer of value in interpreting human behaviour and cannot be supposed to control human history or interfere with human affairs. Physics, psychology and history have proved conclusively that all those events which man explained in terms of the existence of a God or gods, or some abstract ‘Power’ had entirely different causes; but that man, steeped in ignorance, continued to speak of them in terms of religious mystery. Nature does not explain; she is herself in need of an explanation. In the world of physics, Newton is one of the heroes of the scientific revolution. It was he who put forward the theory that the universe is bound by certain unchangeable principles, there being certain laws which govern the motion of all celestial bodies. Later, many other scholars carried this research forward to the point where all events on earth and in the heavens took place according to the immutable “Law of Nature”. After this discovery, it was but natural that the concept of an active and omnipotent God as the power, which made things move appeared meaningless. At most, this discovery allowed for a God who had initially set the universe in motion. Therefore, Newton himself, along with other like-minded scientists, believed in God as the Prime Mover. Voltaire for his part, said that God had created the universe in just the same way as a watch-maker made a watch, assembling the parts, arranging them in a particular order, but afterwards having nothing to do with it. Hume subsequently, abolished this “inactive and worthless God” by advancing the argument that we had seen watches being made, but that since we had not seen the world in the process of creation, it was not possible for us to believe in God.