Is Atheism Dead?

There is a movie from the ’90s called Searching for Bobby Fischer about a child chess prodigy, which was inspired by the life of Josh Weitzman. In the final match of the movie, the main character was competing in a chess match against his opponent. At the end of the final match, he realized that he already won the game because he was able to see several moves ahead and noticed that it would not end favorably for his opponent. So he explained this to his opponent, and offered a draw, except the opponent seeing the board and thinking he had the upper hand passed on his offer, only to find out later that he was actually doomed and should have taken the offer when he had the chance.

Recently I started reading a new book by Eric Mataxas entitled “Is Atheism Dead?”. The main argument of the book is to point out all the overwhelming scientific evidence that has been piling up against atheism that points to a Creator. The evidence is so strong that the atheist’s only hope for survival is to try to suppress this information before it becomes more widely known by the masses, but this is only a matter of time before this inevitable outcome.

In this episode, I want to only discuss a few of the proofs that were brought up in this book that stopped me in my tracks and really made me marvel at the magnificence of God and His creations.

The Big Bang

[21:30] Do the unbelievers not realize that the heaven and the earth used to be one solid mass that we exploded into existence? And from water we made all living things. Would they believe?

(٣٠) أَوَلَمْ يَرَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا أَنَّ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ كَانَتَا رَتْقًا فَفَتَقْنَاهُمَا وَجَعَلْنَا مِنَ الْمَاءِ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ حَيٍّ أَفَلَا يُؤْمِنُونَ

Today the concept of the Big Bang is a considered a scientific fact, but how we came to be able to determine this is a series of marvelous coincidences.

Earth is the only planet in the entire solar system that has the vantage point to be able to witness a perfect solar eclipse, but also the only planet in the entire solar system that has the intelligent life to be able to appreciate such an event. Not only is a solar eclipse awe-inspiring, but it also allows for a colossal scientific experiment that would never be possible without such perfect proportions.

It just happens that the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun and 400 hundred times closer to Earth, such that from the earth the Sun and the Moon look to be the same size. But the moon’s distance to the earth shifts roughly about one inch per year. Meaning with everything else being equal if human beings lived on Earth a few million years earlier or later then we would not be able to have such perfect proportions, not to mention the instability in ocean tides and weather. But again we just happen to be living on the one planet in the solar system at the exact right time to be able to witness a perfect solar eclipse.

A perfect solar eclipse allowed us to observe the chromosphere of the sun and determine through light spectroscopy that stars are made out of predominately hydrogen and helium. A perfect solar eclipse also allowed scientists to confirm Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, that gravity bends the fabric of space and time. The way this was achieved was by observing the stars that became visible during a solar eclipse and then comparing their position later in the year when these stars were not passing by the sun’s mass. What was observed was that the sun’s gravity was bending the light from the stars.

Armed with these two facts astronomers then realized that when they look at the stars at night that the universe was not just the Milky Way Galaxy, but that the clusters of stars they were witnessing were actually entire galaxies of their own. By looking at the light spectrum of the stars they saw that the stars that were further away were also traveling at faster speeds than the one’s closer by, such that if one was to extrapolate this backwards all the planet and stars at some point roughly 13.8 billion years ago was one solid mass.

But the final proof to confirm the Big Bang was postulated that if such an event did happen that there should still be the cosmic background radiation of this initial explosion, which was eventually discovered by two researchers from Bell Labs who realized that no matter where they pointed their radio telescope in the sky they could not avoid hearing a noise. This noise ended up being the last puzzle that validated the proof that is confirmed in the Quran of the Big Bang, known as the Cosmic Microwave Background.

[21:30] Do the unbelievers not realize that the heaven and the earth used to be one solid mass that we exploded into existence? And from water we made all living things. Would they believe?

(٣٠) أَوَلَمْ يَرَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا أَنَّ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ كَانَتَا رَتْقًا فَفَتَقْنَاهُمَا وَجَعَلْنَا مِنَ الْمَاءِ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ حَيٍّ أَفَلَا يُؤْمِنُونَ

Water

It is now an established fact that water is necessary for life. Water has certain amazing qualities that if it was structured in any other way would eliminate any possibility of life ever emerging in the universe. For instance, it is a universal solvent. It has the ability to break down minerals and elements locked up in the rock and deposit it throughout the world. It has a high viscosity to keep it from sinking away from reach and allows it to climb up against the force of gravity in capillaries and plants.

[67:30] Say, “What if your water sinks away, who will provide you with pure water?”

(٣٠) قُلْ أَرَأَيْتُمْ إِنْ أَصْبَحَ مَاؤُكُمْ غَوْرًا فَمَنْ يَأْتِيكُمْ بِمَاءٍ مَعِينٍ

Water is also less dense when it is frozen allowing it to float preserving the life underneath it in oceans, lakes, and rivers. It has high heat specificity so that it takes a tremendous amount of energy to increase or decrease its temperature. This is not only necessary in the temperature calibration of the planet but keeps organisms from overheating.

But one other aspect of water that is truly amazing is how it interacts with the electromagnetic light spectrum. The electromagnetic light spectrum can range from gamma rays which have wavelengths that are 10^-14 to radio waves which can have wavelengths that are kilometers long. It just happens that water absorbs almost all the light spectrum except for a narrow band called “visible light” which are light wavelengths of 380nm – 780nm. So all other light spectrums are blocked except for this narrow band of light.

The reason this is so amazing is that this is the essential band necessary for photosynthesis. Light that has a wavelength lower than this band contains too much energy and can damage organic material, while light with a higher wavelength does not have enough energy and cannot trigger photosynthesis.

To put in perspective just how small this band of light is, imagine you had a stack of hotel key cards that were stacked one on top of each other until it reached the next closest galaxy to the Earth, Andromeda, which is 2.5 million light-years away. That stack would represent the complete light spectrum from gamma rays to radio waves. The visible light spectrum would be equivalent to picking just a single key card out of that entire stack.

Our sun also emits light, but it just happens that ~70% of the light it emits is from the visible light band. Again from this giant range of possibilities it just happens to emit predominately this one kind of light. Interestingly enough our atmosphere will block all the harmful rays that can be devastating to organic life, but allow only the rays that are essential for organic life. But we know that the earliest life forms on the planet most likely originated from the oceans and if water did not possess this quality or our sun emitted predominately another band of light then there would be no life.

So imagine you needed to access a safe inside a hotel room except to enter the room and access the safe you would need to select the right key in two piles that are each 2.5 million light-years tall for each lock, one for the hotel room the other for the safe. Hopefully, this demonstrates just how absolutely mind-boggling these two coincidences are, that both water absorbs predominately all wavelengths of light except visible light and that our sun emits predominately visible light. Without either of these independent properties perfectly aligning, there would be no life.

[71:17] And GOD germinated you from the earth like plants.

(١٧) وَاللَّهُ أَنْبَتَكُمْ مِنَ الْأَرْضِ نَبَاتًا

[21:32] And we rendered the sky a guarded ceiling. Yet, they are totally oblivious to all the portents therein.

(٣٢) وَجَعَلْنَا السَّمَاءَ سَقْفًا مَحْفُوظًا وَهُمْ عَنْ آيَاتِهَا مُعْرِضُونَ

Fine-Tuning

[41:53] We will show them our proofs in the horizons, and within themselves, until they realize that this is the truth. Is your Lord not sufficient, as a witness of all things?

(٥٣) سَنُرِيهِمْ آيَاتِنَا فِي الْآفَاقِ وَفِي أَنْفُسِهِمْ حَتَّىٰ يَتَبَيَّنَ لَهُمْ أَنَّهُ الْحَقُّ أَوَلَمْ يَكْفِ بِرَبِّكَ أَنَّهُ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ شَهِيدٌ

Abiogenesis

In 1952, Uri-Miller experiment claimed that from their experiment they could create amino acids, the basic building blocks of life. Aside from certain issues that were later pointed out regarding some faulty assumptions they made in the original experiment, there has been virtually no progress in the last seventy years since their experiment to show how one could even go from amino acids to a functional cell.

For the longest time, people used to postulate the RNA world hypothesis that perhaps RNA rather than DNA was the starting block for life, except RNA is highly reactive and does not survive long. This is widely seen with the rollout of the COVID mRNA vaccines which originally required extreme cold of -70°C to be stored and now after years of research and development, they are able to get the mRNA more stable at higher temperatures.

Moderna vaccine may have an edge: Unlike Pfizer’s and BioNTech’s offering, it does not have to be stored at –70°C, but can tolerate a much warmer –20°C, which is standard for most hospital and pharmacy freezers. That difference means Moderna’s vaccine should be easier to distribute and store, particularly in the rural United States and developing countries that lack ultracold freezers. Moderna says years of development work enabled its vaccine to be stored at higher temperatures, but last week another mRNA vaccine company announced it is testing a COVID-19 vaccine that early studies suggest can survive at the even warmer temperatures of 2°C to 8°C found in refrigerators.

https://www.science.org/content/article/temperature-concerns-could-slow-rollout-new-coronavirus-vaccines

[22:73] O people, here is a parable that you must ponder carefully: the idols you set up beside GOD can never create a fly, even if they banded together to do so. Furthermore, if the fly steals anything from them, they cannot recover it; weak is the pursuer and the pursued.

 يَاأَيُّهَا النَّاسُ ضُرِبَ مَثَلٌ فَاسْتَمِعُوا لَهُ إِنَّ الَّذِينَ تَدْعُونَ مِنْ دُونِ اللَّهِ لَنْ يَخْلُقُوا ذُبَابًا وَلَوِ اجْتَمَعُوا لَهُ وَإِنْ يَسْلُبْهُمُ الذُّبَابُ شَيْئًا لَا يَسْتَنْقِذُوهُ مِنْهُ ضَعُفَ الطَّالِبُ وَالْمَطْلُوبُ