My Encounter with God: Part III

When I came to know that I would have to prove the existence of God, the first thought that came to my mind was this: How would I do it? At that time I had no idea in which way to proceed. However I started reading books on evolution of life on the earth, hoping that in the entire evolutionary chain of life on earth, starting from the first living cell up to the man, I would be able to find at least some gap somewhere that could in no way be explained by any established theory of evolution, which fact alone would make God relevant and necessary again.

Later on in the 21st century when surfing in the internet has become a regular habit of my life I came to know that this type of reasoning was called “God of the Gaps” argument. If a phenomenon of nature cannot be explained by any known scientific theories or laws, then we can safely conclude that there must be the hand of God behind that phenomenon. But scientists have shown that “God of the Gaps” argument is not a very reliable argument for proving the existence of God, because these gaps were ultimately proven to be temporary gaps only as they were filled up one after another by new scientific discoveries with the advancement of science.

However I did not know anything about this “God of the Gaps” argument at that time, and so I went on pursuing my study on evolution enthusiastically. The National Library of India was situated in Kolkata, and I started frequenting that library regularly. Although I could not find any such gap in the scientific citadel built up by Darwin’s theory of evolution, still I noticed at least one flaw in this theory that is worth mentioning here. In each member of every species on earth we find an instinctive urge to procreate, to leave some offspring before dying. In some species this process of procreation is asexual, whereas in most other species this process is sexual.

This urge to procreate cannot come from within the species itself; rather it must have come from outside. As if some conscious being has created life on earth, and he does not want that life is extinguished on earth in any way. Darwin’s theory can explain other matters related to evolution of life on earth, but it cannot explain whence appeared this urge to procreate in every form of life in general. Let us take the case of the first living cells. These cells increased their progeny by self-replication. Here we can assume two things: 1) The urge to self-replicate had originated from within the cells themselves and 2) the cells were so formed that they were bound to self-replicate. In the first case we will have to assume that the first living cells on earth were both self-conscious and intelligent. They were self-conscious because they knew what they wanted, and they were intelligent because they knew how to achieve what they wanted. These cells wanted to increase their numbers on earth, and so they invented a suitable method also for doing this. But can we think that the first living cells were having consciousness and intelligence?

So we cannot make the first assumption here, and thus we are left with the second assumption only. In this case also we can make two assumptions: 1) These cells were created by someone, and 2) they originated from non-living matter purely by chance. If it was the case that they originated from non-living matter by chance factors alone which were without any purpose as per the atheistic scientists, then why should the outcome of these purposeless processes show some purpose at all? Yes, the fact that these cells self-replicated showed that there was some purpose behind their appearance on earth. Someone has purposefully brought life on earth, and therefore once life has appeared on earth it was his wish that it must then continue as long as possible. In case living cells originated from non-living matter by chance factors only, then it could also have happened that they showed other signs of life excepting that they failed to self-replicate. This was also very much possible and fully consistent with the view of a universe having no purpose at all. In that case we would not have been here on earth, and scientists are also trying to convince us that the universe did not have any wish to bring us here. That we have nonetheless appeared on earth is nothing but an accident. But if it is true that the universe had no wish to bring us here on earth, then it would have been more consistent if the first living cells did not show any sign of self-replication.

Although the above reasoning shows some inadequacy of Darwin’s theory of evolution in explaining certain aspects of life on earth, still I must confess that this inadequacy itself was not sufficient enough to prove the existence of God. So even after reading many books on evolution, I was completely in the dark as I was before when my search for any proof for the existence of God actually began. However in either 1981 or 1982 a special incident happened in my life that changed this dismal situation. I had gone to the National Library to borrow a book from there and I was moving straight to the lending section, knowing well in advance which book to borrow.

But instead of going straight there I halted somewhere in the middle, thought for a while what to do next, took a right turn, went to the place where the catalogues of the books were located, searched for a book haphazardly in the catalogues, selected one, and then issued that book from the lending section. The name of the book was “The Roots of Coincidence”, and its author was Arthur Koestler. The name of Arthur Koestler as an author was well-known to me as I have already read some books authored by him in the early ‘70s. The subjects dealt with in that book were also well-known to me, e.g. telepathy, mind-reading, psycho kinesis, out-of-the-body experience etc. Actually I borrowed that book on that day solely due to the reason that I wanted to know what an author like Koestler had to say on these subjects that had no respectability in academic circles. This one single book changed everything for me, and this one single book helped me immensely in ultimately fulfilling the mission of my life, that is, proving the existence of God.

Those who are God-believers will say here that it was Providence Itself that guided every course of my action on that day, whereas non-believers will say that it was nothing but a coincidence. If it was merely a coincidence that I chose a book written on “Coincidence” on that day that proved to be the most helpful to me for fulfilling the dream of my life, then we must have to admit that it was an exceptionally extraordinary and rarest of rare type of coincidence indeed.