Cartoon: Denumerization

Is God real? - A rational approach.

Various faiths describe God in various ways while some claim God is undefinable. A stretch of the imagination can fill the world with a myriad Gods. However, to determine the presence or existence of a higher power, we need to have certain clear markers. One such marker is intelligence. Unarguably, God must most definitely be more intelligent than us. Another is that God’s proverbial ‘hand’ must direct our lives in ways beyond our influence. It is my humble opinion that such a God exists and I shall explain why. 

Let me break it down as follows:

Intelligence does not need a brain. 

All you need to consider to understand this is the incredible ingenuity of evolution. Just think of the various ways different plants and trees spread their seeds. For example, some plants give brilliant attachments to their seeds before they drop them off from their branches so that the wind may carry them afar. Why not just drop the seeds straight to the ground beneath? How could they possibly come up with such a mechanism? As far as science tells us, they don’t have physical brains, do they? And we haven’t established if they can even register the presence of wind, for God’s sakes! (pardon the pun) Clearly, there is a greater intelligence at work here and I believe it is evolution. Though it’s still a mystery why we are the only branch of species that has gained so much intelligence through evolution while other branches are still so far down the ladder, I believe there is a purpose for this intelligence of which I will discuss later in this post. However, the sole aim of evolution seems to be finding new ways to spread life, in the context of both land area and diversification.

Humans have evolved.

In the broader context, evolution is just one characteristic of life itself. There will come a time when science will answer the true reason the living world is so starkly different from the non-living, but till then we can only marvel at the phenomenon of life. If, in the context of this passage, we consider all of life as nature, then the direction it is headed becomes clearer. We know that nature never stops evolving, but where have we seen any of it over recorded history? Maybe it’s just too short of a time in the scale at which such changes take place, but I am convinced enough to contend that there has been a visible evolution in us humans, at least. We have slowly but steadily grouped ourselves into giant collectives. We have our workers, soldiers, chiefs, etc. and we all work within the parameters of one and the same system thanks to governments and economies. A clear hierarchy of power and allotment of duties makes our modern societies analogous to ant colonies. Too reductionist, you might think, but all I look to achieve by it is to demonstrate that a regulated way of functioning as a group is not a new invention by man but a result of evolution. Ants are able to achieve such an effective model because of years of evolution; and so are we. Furthermore, in some ways the stock market and economy seem strangely like living, breathing organisms in their own right.

We are only as intelligent as nature wants us to be.

Let me exemplify. Though we have discovered and invented so much, the things that really ‘matter’ to an individual is his/her family. The happiest moments of a person are still those spent with his/her significant other or his/her kids. However wonderfully personal and unique different forms of love seem, it is clearly evolution’s way of ensuring that we fulfil our primary purpose, i.e., procreation and child-raising. Our brains and ‘hearts’ are wired in a way that guarantees that we take life forward while blissfully immersed in the illusion of free will. By extrapolation, I would even claim that human evolution has taken us to a level where we have collectively built incredibly complex systems that will one day spread earth-life to other planets. This, to me, is analogous to the plant that sends its seeds afar. And though an average human being, much like the plant, may not posses the intellect to understand why and how to send humans to other habitable planets and constantly lives with the guilt of choosing technological development over the conservation of nature, it is actually nature or evolution’s hand at work behind the scenes. We are mere pawns in the game of life and its spread beyond what it has already conquered. 

Nature/Evolution/Life is an unapologetic God.

At this stage you might argue that I just took a direct leap from some simple evolutionary phenomenon in plants to interplanetary travel, but a careful perusal of what’s happening around the world can justify this. You can see nature’s laws and methodologies everywhere from among multi-national corporations to small communities. It is paramount to understand that ethics and morals are artificial concepts and are seldom seen in the larger scheme of things. What we see for the most part are nature’s laws like ‘natural selection’, ‘survival of the fittest’, etc.; for example capitalism is a clear case of ‘survival of the fittest’ while misfortunes and unequal privileges are outcomes of nature’s preference to effectiveness over efficiency. Much like how a large percentage of seeds end up getting wasted, a large population of people end up living not-so-fulfilling lives. Not all of us will get to become world leaders, celebrated CEOs or popular movie stars and this is the brutal truth. However, much like the worker ants in an ant colony, the majority of human kind is hard at work to enable successful functioning of a system that will finally put a man on Mars, which, in my opinion, is what life wants. So, whether there is a higher power than it or not, all I can say for now is that nature meets most of the definitions of a God.

I apologise if this turned out to be supremely anticlimactic, but hope you enjoyed reading it!