I grew up in a religious family. Seldom did a Sunday pass without me attending worship services. Being innocent and downright clueless then, I understood only the small bits of the whole church thing, but growing up, it stuck with me. Monday to Friday, school. Saturday, wake up, yell “Happy Saturday” to my still-asleep parents, and then play for the rest of the day. Sunday, and this I should never forget, go to church. Every week, for years and years, it went on like that. I can’t say I didn’t get tired of the repetitiveness of my life, but after 13 years, you have to learn to get used to it.

Being raised as a member of the Iglesia ni Cristo (now’s the time for a quick Google search), I had my mother reminding me about what I should and shouldn’t do practically all the time. It wasn’t out of fanaticism or anything like that, but because she didn’t want me to go astray. No sex until you’re married. No marrying someone outside the faith. No eating dinuguan. It was all fine with me, and it still is.

Growing up in that kind of environment, first hearing about atheism confused me. I got the same feeling you would if you used a pencil for 50 years before being informed of the existence of the ball pen. I couldn’t comprehend, much less relate, to the notion that there is no such thing as a god, that a superior being does not exist. I grew up being told about Him and how He is the reason why I breathe, and you can’t expect me to get used to a theory totally opposite that in a snap.

With time, I finally grasped the concept. According to atheism, God is a creation of man. Simple as that. Many explanations have been offered as to why people of earlier times created a deity to worship. Some assert that the concept was used to instill fear in earlier people. Many say it is an attempt to justify all the extraordinary things that happen in the world everyday. Whatever the explanation, it always denounces the concept of a god and labels it as childish and stupid.

Before I go any further, I want to mention that I am not atheist. In fact, I am still active in the INC. But, barring my religious beliefs, I cannot deny that there is at least some validity to that claim, from a scientific point of view at least. Science is all about rationality and reason, and nothing more. There is no firm scientific way to prove God’s existence, therefore science denies the existence of a supreme being. Scientific knowledge explains everything through theories and solutions, formula and equations, simplifying everything and breaking all aspects of the world down to numbers.

With all due respect to atheists and scientists, I find that both intelligent and cowardly. Intelligent, because I find it hard to dissolve the complexities of the world into mere numbers on a chalkboard. Cowardly, because they cannot get past those equations and numbers on their tables and ponder, even for a second, about the possibility of the existence of a supreme deity. A world whose meaning is purely made up of numbers and theorems sounds boring and pointless to me.

Many scientists must have heard that once or twice before, and they will have probably responded with a barrage of facts and bizarre explanations as to how unprovable God’s existence is, using big words nobody understands.

I only have one question about this whole “unprovable” system: the inability to definitively prove God’s existence does not eliminate its probability, right? It is impossible to prove God’s existence, says scientists. Does that automatically disprove it? Imagine you’re in a clearing in the forest, and the leaves are rustling, so there might be a wild animal nearby. Without any evidence (other than the circumstantial rustling of leaves), you can’t really prove that a hungry beast is looking at you and thinking, “Lunch!”, right? But that does not eliminate the possibility that there actually is a wild animal.

So, the argument here should really be “God’s existence is unprovable,” instead of the standard “there is no God.”

This blog attacks Christians’ defense on the matter:

christians always use the retarded Oh, look at how pretty the blue sky is! Look at the birds, the other animals and the trees! We live in a world of beauty… ERGO, god exists argument as if it holds water as a point

Scientifically speaking, that is the theory of Christianity (and religion in general) as to how this world came about. I wouldn’t make that theory void, but of course doing so would bring the possibility of God’s existence into the equation. It is not so much that this is 100% true (from a scientific viewpoint, at least), but that all life on Earth, all this diversity, started out from one bacterium in the big, blue ocean. Call me dumb, call me stupid and innocent, but that is just too flaky for me to believe.

Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, prequel to his controversial bestseller The Da Vinci Code, proposes the possibility of Science and religion supporting each other’s claims, instead of counterpointing. The novel professes that while scientists are able to accurately portray the younger years of the planet using numbers, formulas, theories, et cetera, those numbers lose their meaning as people try to calculate the even younger years of the planet. In short, as we approach time zero, the exact moment of creation, the Big Bang, numbers become useless. A character in the story, Leonardo Vetra, attributed that phenomenon to a “power”, although the term “God” would be too specific.

Are you still with me here? Vetra tried to prove that a “power” was present during the exact moment of creation. He tried to recreate the Big Bang, and successfully did. Two rays of energy were focused on one exact point, and pretty soon, there was an epic bang. Particles of matter (as well as its counterpart, anti-matter) were produced. Vetra concluded that for the scientific Big Bang Theory to be rational, there would have to be a “presence” active during the exact moment of creation. That presence would be religion’s “omnipotent higher power”. God. Buddha. The singularity. The energy. The two rays of power focused on one point.

Of course, this is all fiction, but the whole concept does have some scientific validity to it. What I’m trying to say here is that the power of a God could very well be present in our daily lives, although there is no way to prove that beyond doubt.

In terms of logic, religion is admittedly defeated by science. The latter relies on tangible and clearly observable variables to formulate conclusions, while the former bravely looks past the five senses in finding answers to their questions. Personally speaking, and religious views aside, I wouldn’t totally nullify religion, partly because, as I’ve pointed out before, science’s “that’s it, plain and simple” numbers-and-formula reasoning sounds a bit shady to me.

Let me be openly Christian for a while. Everyday, I wake up and go about my daily routine. Watch TV. Eat. Blog. Friendsterize. I don’t think about the majesty of life too much, but sometimes, when my mind starts to think, I do stop and ponder about it. Science says that if there was just a tad less gravity during the Big Bang, or if some other variable had been changed, it would have been a lifeless world. Imbecilic as it may sound to you, I just can’t accept that. I can’t accept the theory that life played dice with the odds, that we simply pulled the right card out of a stack of billions.

All of this can’t be coincidental. Someone must have intervened.

One hypothetical question that I’ve asked myself before was, “What if you find out on your deathbed that God does not exist? What if, in your final minutes, someone slapped cold hard evidence on your face showing, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that God does not exist?” Again, I do believe God exists, but for the sake of the hypothetical question, I’ll answer it. What if I find out that God does not exist? Well, in my waning moments, I’ll probably be pondering how to justify all the majesty of the world. If it isn’t God, it sure as hell can’t be numbers and theories created by a weird-haired German. A follow-up question could be, “Would you regret a life spent serving a God that didn’t exist?” No, I wouldn’t. Religion and God gives me a sense of purpose. It set out a path for me to follow, to live by. This path ensures that I don’t do anything stupid that will ruin my life. If I follow that path, then it’s a life well lived.

A good question to ask atheists would be, “What if you found out on your deathbed that God indeed exists? What if someone slapped cold hard evidence in your face that God indeed exists? Would you regret? How would you prepare for Hell?” I’m not answering that. If any atheists happen to read this, then drop a comment, please.

Oh, all these what-ifs. Life is too short to be spent worrying. Whether or not you believe in God, as long as you’re not killing people, all’s fine with me.

What are your views on atheism, and perhaps the somewhat-related belief of agnosticism ( The belief that there can be no proof either that God exists or that God does not exist)? Comments are very well appreciated!

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