God, as many cultures across the world believe in, the
ultimate divine power, the creator of this universe withholding the power to
control every action and worshiped by the humanity across the globe. There are
different Gods among different cultures but the beliefs are extensively parallel
such as God punishes the wrongdoings and rewards the good behavior. Everyone
has their own picture of God, in a way that what it is and how they perceive
the idea of God. The idea of God dates back as long as tens of thousands of
years ago in the way as we know it today. But the question remains, “Why did
the humanity as a whole started believing in the idea of a divine supernatural
power?”
Source:
Wikipedia
When this idea started taking different forms in various
cultures, was the time when science wasn’t evolved to a level that it could
answer the questions of creation of the Earth, the Sun, stars, and the nature
as a whole. It was very difficult to explain the sense of being present and
surrounded by the well-established ecosystem. This natural form of the Universe
made the humans think that it was beyond their understanding and further than
the limits of power they possessed to create such a sophisticated system. This
led them to be certain of the existence of a supernatural power or God. But
today, in this era of rapidly progressing science and technology we have
answered most of these questions, then where do we stand today with the
question of the existence of God!
For that we need to look at the different models of the Universe
as proposed by the scientists at different times in the history and their
conflicts with the religious ideology at the time. In the very early ages, the
people thought that the earth was flat with the stars, sun, and moon revolving
around it, without any precise explanation. Then around 6th century
BC mathematician named Pythagoras stated a model with the earth being round but
still at the center of the Universe and rest of the celestial bodies revolving
around it. This model received a lot of criticism at the time.
Ptolemic
Geocentric model of the Universe, Source: Wikipedia
Copernican
Heliocentric model of the Universe, Source: Wikipedia
The major transformation in people’s belief in the
supreme power came when the theory of big bang was proposed, in 1927, based on
the fact that the galaxies around our own were moving further apart with time.
This theory ruled out the forever static model of the Universe and hence
concluded that it was created from a singularity and is expanding at a rapid
speed since then. The theory explained in detail how the explosion of the big
bang took place and how the Universe with all its elements came into existence
the way as we observe it today. Until then, most of the scientists and
astronomers followed the static model of the Universe, including Newton and
Einstein. And hence for that static model to exist, there need not be an
extraordinary power who created it, but if the Universe had been created and wasn’t
static, the question of the creator always loiters around, which most of the people believed to be God
or a similar philosophical idea. Einstein accepted the model in 1931 after
nearly four years of its proposal.
Credits:
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope
Since then there have been extraordinary leaps in
technology, which have answered most of our questions of the creation and
working of the Universe. That is why the ideology of a creator became
questionable. Many of us have, at one point or another, doubted the idea of
God. One of the notable scientists of our era to ask this question was Stephen
Hawking in his book ‘A Brief History of Time’.
There are various questions that everyone has about God.
Who is God? What are the extraordinary powers possessed by God? Is there only
one God? If God created the Universe, then who created God? What form does God
retain? If there is a God, then why is humanity undergoing so many crisis?
Should we believe in God or a similar idea? And most important of it all, Does
God exist? When Stephen Hawking was asked in a press conference that if he does
not believe in God, then, what is his philosophy of Life? The answer to which
he gave and to quote his own words:
“It
is clear that we are just an advanced breed of primates on a minor planet
orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred
billion galaxies. But, ever since the dawn of civilization people have craved
for the understanding of the underlying order of the world. There ought to be
something very special about the boundary conditions of the Universe and what
can be more special than there is no boundary and there should be no boundary
to human endeavor. We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is
always something you can do and succeed at. While there is Life, there is
Hope!”