In this article, I will look into the different types of arguments that arise regarding religion from both the atheist and the theist points of view. This is important as we have major debates in this century on whether there is a need for a creator or the concept of a ‘God’. Arguably, the main problem that people have had in the past with this debate is that not all religions were tolerated.
John Locke had made that clear in his book A Letter Concerning Toleration, in where he wrote that he believed that everybody should be free to pray to God in however style they wanted to. What he didn’t tolerate, however, were atheists, with his reasoning being that they do not fear a God and would do whatever they wanted to, including murder and other things that could damage a society.
Moving swiftly on, now in the 21st Century, we have two sides concerning this matter, the theists who believe in a God and the atheists who don’t believe in a God. Most of the scientists today believe there is no God because of three main viewpoints, the first being that God is not materialistic and therefore doesn’t exist. In other words, they believe that to exist, it has to be materialistic. The second viewpoint is that they cannot scientifically verify the concept of God, meaning that God therefore cannot exist. They claim that something can only exist if you can verify it physically. Finally, the third viewpoint is that they cannot falsify the concept of God, so this means that God cannot exist. All of these viewpoints are illogical, as they all contradict themselves.
At the same time, we have to understand that just because there is no evidence for the physical existence of a God does not mean we can simply dismiss the fact that One may exist. Humans have discovered the existence of a Being they never thought could have existed before. The mere reality that we humans are dependant on something as simple as water tends to make us think that there has to be a Being that is completely independent from anything.
So is religion still relevant in the 21st Century? And is there a God in our world today? I believe the answer to both questions is yes, because of the very fact that people are still looking into whether there is a God or not. Although the number of the atheists have statistically increased, a lot more people are still believers in God and scientists continue to argue the concept of God. If the concept of God wasn’t relevant, then scientists would not spend their entire careers looking into this field. A lot of money is being donated to scientific institutions for them to be able to research into the matter and at some point get to a definitive answer, so if God wasn’t relevant then why would anyone spend millions on research into the matter?
Personally, I believe that there is a God because everything in this world is dependent on something and human beings are dependent on the feeling that there is higher power and a creator for everything. This is because the whole universe cannot just appear out of nothing as some people say. It is illogical if someone says that a table in a room just appeared. This also applies to the concept of the Big Bang for it could not have just appeared; there has to be a driving force and a starting point and that starting point has to be something all powerful and I believe that that is God.
All in all, I believe that those who believe that there is no God contradict themselves at some point because up to now no scientist has positively not contradicted this doubt and proven that there is no God. Religion is as relevant in 21st century as ever, as we are still devoting entire careers to the study of it and discovering new concepts and scientific discoveries that get us a step closer to the concept of God.
