An unnecessary hypothesis

Astronomer Pierre-Simon de Laplace was one day explaining to Napoleon Bonaparte his theory of how the astronomical universe came into existence. When Napoleon asked him where God fitted into his scheme, de Laplace replied, "I have no need of such a hypothesis".

William of Ockham (1300-1349) was the most influential theologian of his age. Ockham (like Kant in the 18th century) found no conclusive force in any of the arguments used to prove the existence of God. He rejected Aristotle's notion that a chain of causes compels us to assume a First Cause.

Stephen Hawking, world-renowned mathematician and physicist, was interviewed by the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in the mid-1980s. Hawking said that he does not think that the universe was created by God or by anything else. "The universe," said Hawking, "does not have any cause or consequences. It simply is."

In The Passion of the Western Mind Richard Tarnas writes that "the scientific data suggested overwhelmingly that the natural world and its history were expressions of an impersonal process... If the unsentimental human reason could adhere closely to the concrete evidence, there was no need to posit the existence of God, and much that argued against it."

The role played by religious belief in human history has nothing to do with the actual existence of Gad. Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud argued that religious beliefs have arisen because of certain human needs, such as a human desire to feel secure in a vast cosmos.

Nietzsche rejected all supernaturalism, and described all religions as man-made. He argued that the God of traditional religion was dead ('God' being a man-made hypothesis), and no longer had any role to play in intellectual life - so much so that modern epistemology tends to ignore speculation about the existence of God!