How do we respond to atheists who say nature has no space for god?

Question from James Stroud, how do we respond to atheists who say that nature has no space for God? Answer, this is not a factific claim, that nature has no space for God. It is a philosophical claim and it is a philosophical claim that is based on the assumption of atheism. Science in and of itself can neither prove theism nor atheism.

Science basically involves using methodologies to study the observed nature and to try to come up with principles, laws, theories that explain the behaviour of nature as we have observed it. So, within science itself, there is no metaphysical or philosophical bias about what the nature of reality is. Now, science can observe matter because it is based on Ratyaksha and Hanuman.

Ratyaksha is observation, Hanuman is inference. And it can arrive at some conclusions about how matter works. But to say that matter is all that exists, that, now when scientists use the word nature, they generally use it, atheists use the word nature, they use nature in the sense of matter and they equate naturalism with materialism and their idea is that matter is all that exists.

Now, matter is all that exists is not a scientific observation or inference. It is a metaphysical claim. It is a metaphysical claim, it is a philosophical claim.

And how has this philosophical claim come about? Again, it is something which has been assumed based on the philosophy of materialism. So, therefore, we have to essentially examine whether, when atheists say that nature has no space for God, is it that that statement is a result of some experiments, some observations, some influences or is it just an outgrowth of a biased metaphysical presumption. Now, what we know through science is that matter is all that can be observed.

But does that mean that there is nothing beyond matter? There is no experiment that can prove that. There is no experiment or observation that can prove that. Now, one argument that scientists can give, that scientists here, I mean atheistic scientists can give is that nature as we observe it seems to be a self-contained system.

That means that nature in and of itself does not require any outside intervention for its functioning. So, this can be used by certain atheists to infer that there is no God. So, let's look at this claim.

Firstly, the idea that nature works as a self-contained system is not necessarily indicative of the non-existence of God. From the Vedic perspective, God has designed nature to be self-contained. In the Ishopanishad it is described, The absolute truth is perfect and complete.

And this material world is complete. Why is it complete? Because whatever emanates from the complete whole is complete in itself. And the complete whole, despite giving out so many complete units, remains complete.

The complete whole doesn't get exhausted. So, when we see nature as a self-contained system in which material actions produce material reactions and all actions and all events can be traced back to material causes, at least at the material level, then this can very well indicate the completeness and perfection of God's creation by God's plan. So, God has made the world to function in such a way that he has arranged some systems, some laws, some mechanisms by which the world functions.

And Bhagavad Gita also says, What is the nature of God's interaction with this world? He is the overseer and the sanctioner. Mayadhyakshena prakriti suitesa charancharam. So, Upadrishtanamantacha, that verse primarily refers to how God interacts with the living beings in this world.

And Mayadhyakshena prakriti, that verse 9.10, the earlier was 13.23 in the Bhagavad Gita, 9.10 refers to how God oversees prakriti in terms of matter. So, the interaction of God with both matter and spirit in this world, with what scientists call as nature and what scientists may call as consciousness, souls, both is through the medium of supervision. He doesn't intervene directly.

On what basis does he supervise? Yes, there are laws and principles which he has made and he allows matter to function according to those laws. So, from a cause-effect point of view, we can say that nature is causally complete and so we don't need God per se. At the same time, this causal completeness also requires a cause.

And that cause is not explainable by materialism. Albert Einstein said, the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. This means that if matter, matter that is operating according to previous material causes, if matter had just emerged from chance, from a primeval explosion, an unguided, unsupervised explosion, and then it had subsequently developed into the universe with all the constituents as we see it and as science studies it today, then why should this random configuration of matter behave according to patterns that can be comprehended by the human mind and patterns that can be discerned by precise mathematical equations? Why should the movement of a celestial object in the sky and a movement of an electron within matter obey mathematical laws? So, science may observe causal completeness and atheists may use it to say that there is no meaning for God in nature because nature is causally complete.

That means effects and causes can be explained at the material level. But this causal completeness itself requires a cause. The comprehensibility of the universe is itself incomprehensible, as Einstein said.

Or the explainability of the universe requires an explanation. Why does nature behave according to predefined, precise, mathematically expressible laws? That's a strong indication that the arrangement of matter is an expression of the intelligence of a person who is himself having a mathematical sense and who is himself a mathematician. And in that sense, God is the supreme designer, the supreme mathematician.

So, the idea that atheists had was that we could explain the complex phenomena that we observe in the world in terms of simple laws and if those laws are acting on matter, then there is matter, there is energy and laws and just these three are enough to explain everything in the universe and therefore God is not essential. And the idea was that at the large scale level, at the cosmic level, at the anthropic human level we'll have complex laws and as we go down, down, down to the microscopic level we will have simple laws and the simple laws, their idea was that they could be just the freaks of nature. So, as scientists have studied nature more and more and they have found that as we go down to microscopic levels whether it is with respect to the study of cells in living things or study of atoms and subatomic particles in non-living things we see order at every level of the universe and the ordering principles are not simple.

They are more and more complex. So, from the atheistic point of view the source or the cause of these laws which are themselves extremely complex is a mystery. That's why, actually speaking, if we study nature objectively the deeper and deeper we go into the study of nature we observe not lessened complexity, not simplicity but a heightened complexity and greater sense of order and aesthetics even at the subtle level than what has been seen at the macroscopic level.

So, rather than, to the progress of scientific research rather than proving atheism is actually confirming theism. I'll repeat this argument so that it is clear. The atheistic idea is that we see so much complexity and design in the world around us and where does this come from? The normal theistic response was that it comes from God and the atheists did not want to accept this response.

So, they said, no, no, it is just a result of material interactions of matter and energy based on laws. So, and the idea was that matter and energy they are currently arranged in complex forms and if we go back to the start of the universe then they were originally arranged in very simple forms and those simple forms could have emerged by chance. But, where did the laws come from? Matter and energy interacting according to laws may be able to explain much of what we observe but where did the laws come from? So, the idea was that complex laws could be simplified down to very simple laws and they could also have come by chance.

But, today when we study the structure of a cell and there is, within a cell there are complex machines. In fact, in many ways, a simple cell is more complex than the most complicated factory that we have. Within these cells there are input-output regulatory mechanism, there is energy generation plant, there is a reproductive unit, there is a transportation unit and there is extraordinarily precise and complex coordination of the functioning that is happening over there.

So, we are not, and all these are according to laws that the best researchers need energy and effort to study. So, for example, the idea was that the design that we see at the macroscopic level, at the human level, that has come from the genes which is fine, but now we have found that the genes themselves are a complex language made with an alphabet and that language and that alphabet is so complex that just understand the human genome takes, took dozens of scientists several decades and that human genome is incredibly complex. So, it's like we have some level of laws at our human level, but then when we go down to the cellular level, we find that the laws there are so complex that they run into thousands and thousands of pages of computer code.

So, the genomes, the genetic code is more or less like a computer code which directs the functioning of the, basically the replication of the DNA and the other eventually, various other functions within the cell in particular and in the body of the organism at large. So, the very fact that at every level, even at the microscopic level, we are finding complex laws and these complex laws are not becoming, resolving into simpler laws, but they are revealing their own extraordinary complexity and they are organizing matter in ever more rationally and aesthetically appealing orders. So, when we see order at every level in the universe, then that naturally raises the question where does that order come from and this idea that at the microscopic level the order is more complex than at what is at the visible level, this actually completely shatters the foundation of atheism because atheism has always faced the problem of explaining order and coherence and their fundamental idea of the atheist was that complex order comes from simple order, but when we find that complex order as it has at its base even more complex order, then the atheistic position becomes stumped and that's why as scientific research is progressing more and more, it is the evidence of science which is pointing us away from atheism and towards theism.

Thank you.