I III MAN INTHE RED UNDERPANTS


A. R. GREEN

Bismi Allahi Alrrahmani Alrraljeemi In the name of Allah, the most Beneficent, the most Merciful

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Chapter i

I’m pretty sure you’re not going to like this. Probably not one bit. It talks about all sorts of things that a lot of us spend a lot of time trying to avoid. Like death! Yes, that’s right, death. Death, judgement, hellfire and paradise (or is it all pie in the sky?), the meaning of life and of course, the big one - is there really a God, or is it all a delusion? Just the sort of things you’d try your utmost to avoid thinking about. And what has this got to do with  anyway?


I want you to come with me on a journey. It’s not a long one, but on the way we are going to encounter some very interesting and probably scary things, and things that you won’t want to believe even though they make sense. Some of you are chickening out already; some of you will put this down and not even finish it, and some of you will turn you noses up in disgust, and that is very, very sad because you’ll miss out on the most important thing in your life ever!


There are some of you who will read the whole thing and perhaps even agree with it, but never get round to doing anything about it, and that is both really sad and really bad. Well, I told you this is going to have stuff you won’t like! But somewhere, some of you will see it all through. You’ll think a little, or a lot, and then you’ll do something truly amazing with your life, you’ll accept the inevitable conclusions of reason, take a deep breath (at least mentally) and decide to make a commitment that will transform you in wonderful ways. As scary as it seems, and once you do that, things will make even more sense.


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OK, enough of the hype, let’s get down to the nitty gritty. Let’s begin the journey and step aboard our vehicle; reason and common sense.


What would you do if a man in a pair of red underpants came knocking on your door saying that he’d come to read the gas meter?


Yes, I am serious, what would you do? Actually, what you actually would do is not so important here as what process you would use and what faculties you would employ to come to a decision about this man and his claim. Would you believe him without thinking and let him into your house? Just ‘have faith?’ Or would you think about the situation, ask some questions and apply reason? I’m pretty sure it’s the last one. Even if you told him to “Get lost you weirdo!”, you’d use reason, logic and common sense to make sense of the man in red underpants, just as we do for most things that happen in our lives.


Now, before we go any further I need you to agree with me on one thing. If you don’t agree with me on this, there’s isn’t much point in going any further. We need to agree that the world we live in is real and you and me and everything around us really does exist and is not the product of a computer generated illusory world, or some dream that you happen to be in. Now I know that I can’t actually prove this, and that it really is possible that all we see around us is a dream or an illusion but how does that help us? If we think THAT, then we could never make sense of anything, and even if we did accept that, we’d still use our reason to try and make sense of it and would still inevitably have to accept what we see as being real in some sense.


So, if you’re with me on this; that the world is real and that what we see, smell, touch, hear, and taste is real. That our senses send information to our brain and we use our mind to make sense of what is going on, then let’s use this process to make sense of this life, world, universe and everything.

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Now, there are some things we might call ‘universal’ because just about everybody as far as we know would agree on them. In fact, these ideas are so basic they are part of what makes us human, and if someone didn’t agree to it we’d probably think they were mad. For example, the statement “part of something is less than the whole” is a universal. It’s common to all humans, that’s why we call it ‘common’ sense. It’s so obvious it doesn’t need explaining. Agree with me so far? OK. Here is another...’something doesn’t come from nothing’. And how about ‘order doesn’t spontaneously arise from chaos’?


What is there in the totality of human experience that would lead us to believe that something comes from nothing or that order just spontaneously arises from chaos?


Well that’s right! Nothing. Actually what we consistently experience is that where there is order, form and systems, something has imposed the order, the form and systems. The more complex and ordered the systems, the more functional the form, the greater the level of intelligence behind it.


So here are two truths wc can use to make sense of the world, the universe and life. Universal human experience tells us that when we find things working according to systems, laws and patterns, something has made those systems, laws and patterns. That is why an archaeologist can find a piece of pottery in the earth and be sure and certain that some people, whom he has never seen, made this piece of pottery. In fact, he might be able to tell us a whole range of things about those people, their culture and state of technology from this one piece of pottery. He knows that this was designed, not as a product of some random movements of the earth, sun and natural forest fire that somehow came together to produce this piece of baked clay. Perhaps it is possible this might have happened, but it’s not likely. In fact, the more that person can see of this pottery the more unlikely this possibility seems and the more certain he or she would be of its being designed on purpose (if they even had any doubt in the first place!)


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Let’s take another example of something most of us have and use on a regular basis: a mobile phone. Your mobile phone is composed of a few basic elements. Plastic, glass, silicon for the chip, and some precious metals. Plastic comes from oil, and glass and silicon from sand. So basically what you are holding in your hand is oil and sand. Now, what if I told you that I was walking along in the desert of Arabia (lots of oil and sand) and picked up a mobile phone w'hich 1 found lying there... a product of billions of years of random events? The wind blew, the sun shone, the rain fell, lightning struck, the oil bubbled, the camel trod and after millions and millions of years the mobile phone formed itself. And naturally I pick it up, push the call button.,.”IIi, Mom!”


Is there a chance that this could have randomly formed itself through natural processes? However remotely possible, most of us would simply not accept this as a reasonable explanation.


Why then would we accept such an explanation for our universe and the life within it? Even if we accept evolution as a process, the idea that life evolved merely as a series of random events is difficult to accept as a reasonable explanation. Even the most basic human cell is more complicated than a mobile phone! At least the theory of evolution attempts to offer some explanation of how this might have happened, but the idea that the universe is a product of some random events has no comparable explanation, and the laws, systems and forms that shape the universe are actually much more complex than those that govern biological life!


Let’s take the example of our earth and solar system. The earth rotates on its axis once every twenty-four hours. Imagine the earth was spinning really slowly. A day or night is say 30 or 40 years long instead of 24 hours. One part of the earth’s surface would be exposed to sunlight for that time, and the other in darkness. So the earth’s surface would be both super heated and super cooled. Or, if we were fractionally (in cosmological terms) closer to the sun or further away, it would be too hot or too cold. Or, if the composi-

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i ion of the gases in the atmosphere was not exactly the right blend of oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, or if there was no ozone to filter out the harmful effects of the sun’s radiation, without these optimal conditions it is difficult to see how life could exist.


When we look at the Big Bang theory that explains the origins of the universe, one might fairly ask “since when do explosions form intricate and balanced systems and complex life forms?” Yet, that is what some people propose happened with the universe and the Big Bang! One might respond that this is a very simplistic approach but it just so happens that science too is suggesting that the laws that govern the universe are so fine tuned that life could not exist without this degree of fine tuning.


This can be observed in what are called the constants of nature, of which there are quite a few, but let’s concentrate on four of the most well known forces: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and gravity. Two of these, the strong and weak electromagnetic forces, are responsible for the production of carbon, the element upon which all known life is based. The forces cooperate in such a way as to create an equilibrium of energy levels, which enables the production of carbon from the fusing of three helium atoms. For three helium atoms to collide and create carbon is very unlikely because under normal circumstances, the energies would not match up and the three helium atoms would come apart before they had time to fuse into carbon. But if there is a statistically unusual match of the energies, then the process is much faster. The slightest change to either the strong or weak electromagnetic forces would alter the energy levels, resulting in greatly reduced production of carbon and an ultimately uninhabitable universe.


Consider also the strength of gravity. After the Big Bang billions of years ago the matter in the universe was randomly distributed. There were no planets, galaxies or stars, just atoms floating around in the dark void of space. As the universe began to expand, gravity


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pulled ever so gently on the atoms, gathering them into clumps that eventually became stars and galaxies. What is important is that the force of gravity had to be just right. If gravity was a bit weaker, the atoms would have been so widely distributed that they would never have been gathered into galaxies, stars and planets.


If the force of gravity was a bit stronger, the atoms would have been pulled together into one single mass and then the Big Bang would have simply become the Big Crunch. The strength of gravity has to be just right for stars to form. So what is ‘just right? Well, imagine your weight was heavier or lighter by one billionth of a gram! That’s the sort of fraction of difference we are talking about for the universe to be so different that there would be no galaxies, stars, planets or life. Makes shedding a few kilos seem simple, doesn’t it? It’s strange how intelligent, educated humans can’t seem to shed a bit of weight in order to live longer but the universe can seem to organise itself into the optimal conditions for life through coincidence!


And that’s not all! Let’s take a closer look at the universe’s rate of expansion after the Big Bang. If the rate of expansion was greater and the early universe expanded faster, the matter in the universe would have become so diffused that gravity could never have gathered it into stars and galaxies. If the rate of expansion was slower, gravity would have overwhelmed the expansion and pulled all the matter back into a black hole. If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been slower by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have re-collapsed before it ever reached its present size! In fact, the expansion rate was just right, so that stars could exist in the universe.


Another example of this fine tuning is the density of the universe. In order for it to grow in a life-sustaining manner, the universe must have maintained an extremely precise overall density. The precision of density must have been so great that a change of one part in 1015 (i.e. 0.0000000000001%) would have resulted in a collapse, or big crunch, occurring far too early for life to have de-

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veloped, or there would have been an expansion so rapid that no stars, galaxies or life could have formed.


Remember our mobile phone in the desert?


Isn’t it much more reasonable to conclude that the universe and life are a result of wilful intelligent design?


After all, what are the options?


Could it really have just come from nothing? And if that is the case, then why not apply that to everything else in life? The man in the red pants, maybe he just spontaneously appeared!


Could it have created itself? Well we just don’t attribute to the collection of stars and galaxies that we call the universe the ability to design and systemise. Surely that needs intelligence and will?


So if common sense and reason point so conclusively towards the existence of intelligent and wilful design, what other conclusions can we come to through the use of reason?


Well, one conclusion one might certainly reach is that the nature of the source of this intelligence and will must be different in nature from the universe it created.


Why is that? Because if it was the same, then all we would have is more of the same i.e. more creation, and then one might rightly ask, so what created that? Surely something more intelligent and wilful, and then of course we would ask the same question about that...what created it? And we would go on and on forever looking for the intelligence and will behind the intelligence and will, a creator creating a creator creating a creator ad infinitum! There is a good reason why things can’t be that way, and this is best explained through an example.


]()

Imagine a sniper who has acquired his designated target and radios through to HQ to get permission to shoot. I IQ however, tells the sniper to hold on while they seek permission from higher up. So the guy higher up seeks permission from the guy even higher up and so on and so on.


If this keeps going on, will the sniper ever get to shoot the target? Of course not!


He’ll keep on waiting while someone is waiting for a person higher up to give the order. There has to be a place or person from where the command is issued, a place where there is no higher up.


So our example illustrates why there is a rational flaw in the idea that there might be creators creating creators ad infinitum... We can’t have creators creating creators forever, or else, just as the sniper will never shoot, the creation will never get created. But the creation is here. It exists. So we can dismiss the idea of an infinite regression of causes as being an irrational proposition.


So what is the alternative?


The alternative is a first cause. An uncaused cause!


We could conclude that the nature of the intelligent and wilful force behind the universe, life and everything must have a different nature from the creation, and as we have seen, there are compelling reasons to do so.


So...if the creation is needy, the Creator should be self-sufficient.


And if the creation is temporary, the Creator should be eternal.


And if the creation is confined by space and time, the Creator should be free of space and time.

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And if the creation is common, the Creator should be unique.


And it follows reasonably that there could only be one unique, eternal, self-sufficient being unconfined by space and time, for if there were more than one then these attributes could not apply. How could there be two or three eternal beings, or two beings unconstrained by space or time?


This is why it makes so much sense to believe in One Unique Eternal and Self-Sufficient Creator.


Common sense and reason lead easily, or perhaps even inevitably, to the conclusion that the universe has been created by a transcendent being unlike in essence to anything that we know.


This of course makes it difficult to understand much more about this Creator through reason, and that’s why some people stop right there.


But our journey doesn’t end here, in fact in many ways it only begins. We still have so many questions unanswered, so many issues unresolved.


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Chapter 2

Why is there suffering in the world?


If there is a Creator, why does this Creator let bad things happen? What is the purpose of life?


Why are we here and what is it all for, and where are we going?


Is there life after death?


Is there some way to know more about this Creator?


It’s not really surprising or extraordinary to expect that the One who created this Universe would give some guidance in such matters, since the Creator has provided a means to satisfy every need that we have, both physical and emotional. We feel hunger and need nutrients to sustain us, and all the means to provide those nutrients are there. We thirst, and there is drink, we need clothes and means exists to protect ourselves from the elements, and so on. We also need companionship, love and support and we have parents and families and live in societies that fulfil those needs. It makes sense that the One who has provided for all of these needs would also provide the answers to such deep, pressing and impor tant issues.


In fact, in some ways those deeper questions are even more important than the physical and emotional issues, since they define our very reason for being. Evidence shows that when people have no clear and convincing direction and purpose in life as individuals and societies, they become profoundly dissatisfied, confused and unhappy So the need to know why we are here and where we are


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going and what this is all for is as important to us as food, drink and sex!


There may be many possible answers to these questions, and looking at the multiple different ideas that have come from the human mind, it would seem that reason might not be the best thing to use to find the answers to these perplexing questions because what we want are not just any answers, but the right answers. The problem here is that this is in fact an area where reason doesn’t do very well.


As an example, imagine someone took you to a strange building. You’re standing at the closed front door, and that person asks you, “What’s behind that door, inside the building?” How much could you know through reason? You might be able to guess some things, like perhaps there being tables and chairs and lights and taps...but you could be wrong. It could be completely empty, or completely full or...well, almost anything. So how could you know, how could you reach certainty about what is behind that door? Well of course you could go in and see it with your own eyes, but what if that was not possible? How, then, could you come to know what is inside?


Well, one way is that someone who has been inside tells you, or even a person who knows someone who has been inside tells you. But the question here is, how can I trust that man? How can I be sure that woman is telling the truth?


It’s the same with these big questions; the purpose of life, why is there suffering, is there life after death...what is behind the door?


It is hidden, unseen and unknown. Reason can’t come to any definitive answers, nor is there any reason to believe that intuition, or just ‘feeling it’ would do any better.


We can only get any degree of certainty when someone we have good reason to trust tells us.


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Of course we still need reason. It’s only that it doesn’t work so well here as a direct source of knowledge about these matters. We still need reason to figure out who to trust.


We’re back to the man in the red pants! Why should I believe or reject his claim?


Religions generally are making quite a special claim. The claim is that they have a message from the Creator, and often a message that is supposed to be exclusive to that religion. So it’s a case of: ‘I’m right and everyone else is wrong!’ Not that this claim is in and of itself a problem from the point of view of reason. After all, if this Wise Creator did decide to send us a message it would make sense for it to be a consistent one, and since different religions make some contradictory claims, they can’t all be right! No, the challenge here is deciding which one, if any is right. Instead of one person claiming they’ve come to read the gas meter there are seven!


All is not lost. You see, looking at all those people gathered at your door, by using the same process of reason there are some things you can easily use to pick out who really is the one entitled to read the gas meter. For example, he or she might have some I.D. and a uniform with the name of the gas company to whom you pay the bill to, and probably a device to read the meter. In the same way there are some signs we can use to distinguish the true religion from the false.


Since this is such an emotive issue it might be worth taking a little time to reflect on the sorts of inappropriate means testing that we might sometimes apply. This can be something like: ’which one looks like me and is from my race?’ Would you use that to decide who comes into your house to read the meter? After all, criminals come in all races and colours as do gas meter readers.


Flow about: ‘Let me just feel who the right one might be, and then I’ll just believe it enough for it to be true’. No! I thought not.


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Well how about the one who makes a really good offer, like “If yi >u have faith in me as the gas meter reader you can have free gas Ini ever!” Tempting, but unlikely!


()r maybe just pick the one who looks something like the guy that used to come knocking on your parents’ door sometimes (even i hough they never even had gas...hmmm!)


I low about the one who looks smartest and with the most money? Thought not!


1'he point being here is that when it comes to religion you need to dismiss certain ideas. For instance, like merely following whatever your ancestors believed just because it seems familiar, or because you love them so much or can’t imagine how they could have been wrong! I’m sure that all of you do some things, if not many things, differently from your parents. So how is it that they could be wrong about those things and not about religion?


There is simply no compelling reason to assume that whatever your parents and ancestors believed was the truth, and it also does not make any reasonable sense just to ‘believe’ and take a leap of faith without any sort of reasonable justification. And what sort of reasoning would lead one to conclude that the true religion should make you rich, or that by merely believing in a particular person or thing you will get eternal life? Of course, one of the favourite reasons for justifying a choice of religion is that someone started following this religion, it changed their life and they’re happy!


This actually does make some sense, since there are some good reasons to believe that that is what the true religion should do, but the problem here is that lots of other people make the same claim about their different religious experiences. It seems that we have been created to be religious. It’s part of our nature. If we don’t follow one of the standard religions we’ll soon invent one!


So some religion will always make us happier than none. So again, just claiming your religion is true because it changed your life can’t


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be on its own a sound criterion, because then other religions must also be true because they too have changed peoples’ lives. In fact, even someone who has decided to believe that there is no Creator at all might make the same claim that he or she used to follow a religion and now they don’t, and they are more happy and free! As the saying goes, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.


If it’s true for one it must be true for the other also.


So these are all mere claims. Claims need to be proven.


So true religion, (if there is one!) should have some I.D. It should have some markers through which and by which we can know that its origin is from the Creator.


So what tests could we apply?


Chapter 3

The first test, and probably the best and most convincing, very soon leaves us with few options.


What exactly does it say about the Creator? Which religion teaches that there is One Unique Creator whose nature is differ ent from the creation: One, Eternal, Self-Sufficient, Transcendent Creator?


It’s not my intention here to criticise and mock various religions, since all religions teach and encourage a common range of morals

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.md values. They all have their various strengths and weaknesses. Rather, the purpose is just to examine them in the light of this simple and universally understandable criterion.


In the light of this we have, perhaps controversially, only three real contenders: Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Islam. Christians might claim that they have a right to be included in this category, but .it least from the position of normal Christian belief it must join every other religion in compromising or distorting this concept of t he Unique Creator in one way or another.


l or example, Hinduism generally has a pantheistic concept of god. I his is the idea that everything is God. The universe, earth, moon, stars, trees, animals and us, are all God.


I low can we reasonably understand and justify such a claim? If we mean by ‘God’, the Creator, then this is saying the creation created itself, and the creation is the Creator. I low does this explain t he ordering of a finite universe, and what rational evidence is there to support such a claim? This is really like saying the universe created itself. But if it was not there in the first place how could it have created itself?


Also, we don’t ascribe to the universe the ability to order and systemise. It is not one of its qualities or attributes. The universe is made of stars and galaxies, and these themselves are in need of a Creator. Since they need an organiser individually, they also need it collectively! A collection of needy things does not somehow become self-sufficient. A country full of starving people is not any more likely to be able to feed itself than an individual starving person!


Christianity shares a similar problem. Of course many Christians would put forward the same arguments for the existence of the Creator as I have already put forward, but then go on to say that Jesus, a limited, finite, needy being, was God. The problem here


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is clear. How rationally can anything be two complete opposites at the same time? How can the finite also be infinite at the same time? How can something be self-sufficient and needy, eternal and temporary, both common and unique, one and many all at the same time?


This is rather like saying, for example, that a circle became a square but still remained a circle. One could conceive of the idea of taking the line of a circle and forcing it into the shape of a square, but of course it then simply stops being a circle. Or one could put the circle in the square or the square in the circle, but it can’t be both a square and a circle at the same time. This is by definition an impossibility, and you can never bring a reasoned argument for an impossibility. So this is a claim that can never be proven. The biggest problem is that it contradicts the reasoned arguments for the existence of the Creator in the first place since if one created, finite, needy being could be the creator, why not another and another and another? How can you rationally defend such a belief against pantheism, for example?


The response to this is often “well, God can do anything”. This, of course is a claim about God, and claims about God, like anything else, need to be proven. It’s also a statement that is fraught with problems. For example, one might ask “Can God stop existing?” or “Can God do something evil?”


There are two usual responses to such a question. Father: “No, He can’t”, which contradicts what the Christians previously said about God being able to do anything, or “Yes, He can if He wanted to but God never would do anything evil because the nature of God is good.”


Why then is this true of God’s goodness but not His other attributes? Exactly the same criterion applies to God being One, Eternal and Self-Sufficient. Just as it is not in the nature of the good God to do evil, also it is not in the nature of the Eternal,

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Sell Sufficient Creator to become a temporary anti needy creation. So the claim that the Creator became creation and still remained i he (Creator is a claim that can never be proven, since it is by defi- nition an impossibility, and this applies to any religion that makes such a claim about the Creator. This also dispenses with most of what Hindus and pagans believe since they make similar claims about the Creator being incarnated as some created being.


Some Christians might claim that they don’t consider Jesus as (iod, but as God’s Son. The problem here is what is meant by saying “God’s Son”? A human son is human like his mother and father, so is God’s Son also God? If so, we are back where we started and we have the same problem as before. Also a son is a product of a sexual act. So did God have sex? Clearly this would contradict everything we know so far about God being unlike the creation. Well perhaps God sort of adopted Jesus as a son? This also makes no sense, since you can only adopt something as a son which is like you. For example, if someone had a pet fish called Flappy and said: “This is my son”, no one would take it seriously. You might love it like a son, it may eat with you and have a room in the house and perhaps you might even get some adoption papers, but the fish is a fish and you are human. The two are not alike, and we know the Creator is not like anything in the Universe. In fact, we are more like fish than we are like the Creator. We are limited, finite, needy beings and so are fish, whereas the Creator is the eternal and self- sufficient. In fact, the Creator must be far removed from having a son, either literally or symbolically, except perhaps in the very metaphorical sense that our parents care for, guide and nurture us and so does the Creator. However, this term would apply to all creatures, not just humans, let alone just one human.


As for Buddhism, well the Creator doesn’t really get a look in.


This leaves Buddhism more like a philosophy than a religion, and this comes with its own issues, namely that explanations for the purpose of life, the reason for suffering, and the big unknown of the afterlife are the ideas of a man, not God.