Does God Exist? - On the Recent Misplaced Debate Between a Theologian and a Poet

𝐃𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐄𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭? - 𝑶𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑹𝒆𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝑴𝒊𝒔𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒆𝒅 𝑫𝒆𝒃𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝑩𝒆𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒂 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒂 𝑷𝒐𝒆𝒕

Scientists For Society 

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इस लेख को हि‍न्दी में पढ़ने के लि‍ए यहां क्लि‍क करें

The Hindi news outlet ‘Lallantop’ recently organized a debate with the title ‘Does God Exist?’ Mufti Shamail Nadwi — a theologian representing the theists — faced off against Javed Akhtar — a poet representing the atheists. The only problem with this debate was that it was a debate between the unequals. On one hand was an expert in the field of theology. On the other hand, was a poet who has no expertise in science or philosophy, and therefore, as far as this debate is concerned, is a layman. History has shown that in the struggle between consistent idealism and mechanical materialism, the former has mostly emerged victorious, as was seen in this debate. Well, as a matter of fact, the arguments made by Mufti Shamail were also ordinary from a consistent idealist standpoint — even obnoxious to the extent of nauseating at many places — which could have easily been demolished from a consistent dialectical materialist perspective. But, to expect it from a liberal poet with a deductive, empiricist, positivist and mechanical materialist worldview is too much to ask! As a result, the debate was nothing but a sham toothless fight — two “wise” men going at each other with paper mache swords and a lot of Quixotic posturing. Unfortunately, the debate was hyped in the social media as the “biggest debate on God” and its videos on YouTube saw millions of views. The weak arguments made by Javed Akhtar bolstered the followers of Mufti Shamail to declare him the winner in the debate and to claim that it is a definitive victory of the theists over the atheists. Well, ‘Scientists for Society’ holds that to believe in a religion or not is purely a personal matter, and calls for a strict separation of religion from the State and public sphere. However, this debate is now not merely confined to the personal choice or opinion of an individual, but has become a matter of public discourse on scientific and materialist worldview, on logic and rationalism. Therefore, as committed scientists, materialists and rationalists, we believe it is our bounden duty to defend science, materialism and rationalism from the gibberish thrown at it in this debate. In fact, the whole purpose of science is to study matter in motion. Therefore, a genuine scientist must also be a materialist and this is what Epicurus, Democritus, Darwin, Haldane, Stephen J Gould, Einstein, Sakata, Taketani and Hawking have taught us.

𝐎𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐰𝐝 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐮𝐟𝐭𝐢 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐥

In the very beginning of his speech, Mufti Shamail delineates a set of standards or yardsticks which, according to him, can be the only genuine parameters to judge the validity of any argument. As part of this, Mufti Shamail rejects science and scientific evidence as valid yardstick to judge the credibility of the arguments in this debate. Science, according to Mufti Shamail, is an empirical study of the natural and physical world, and as God belongs to the supernatural and the metaphysical realm, it is beyond the purview of science and empirical observation to prove or disprove its existence. Then, to placate his innocent unsuspecting opponent he concedes that he is not going to use revelation and religious scriptures to validate any argument either. Finally, he declares that only reason and logic can be the sole parameters to judge the validity of any argument.

Javed Akhtar lost the entire debate in these first few minutes when he let Mufti get away with these absurd and nonsensical standards. First of all, Mufti Shamail assumed beforehand the existence of a supernatural and metaphysical realm as an unquestionable truth and thereby rejected science and observation as insufficient tools to study this realm, because science can only study the natural and the physical world. But, wasn't the whole point of this debate to prove the very existence of this supernatural and metaphysical reality? In other words, Mufti Shamail began by presupposing the very thing that he had to prove in the course of this debate. The premise and the conclusion of Mufti’s arguments are the same - that a supernatural being/reality exists. Therefore, it won't be a blasphemy to imagine our esteemed Mufti as a sly snake biting his own tail, entrapped in a circular logic and a tautological fallacy. He uses this presupposition, later in the debate, to counter Javed Akhtar’s claim that the concept of time applies only to the natural world, and because God belongs to the supernatural world, the concept of time doesn't apply to him, and hence what God did before making the universe is an irrelevant and illogical question. He then goes on to elaborate this by saying that as God is the “Necessary Being” who created time and space itself, he can never be within boundaries of time and space. We will come to the bogus argument of “Necessary Being” later in the essay. But here the readers must remember that Mufti Shamail doesn't, even once, try to prove how God existed before time and he created time and space. He just blurted it like a universal and absolute truth that requires no verification.

Secondly, Mufti Shamail juxtaposes logic and reason against science and the material world, making it seem like logic and reason stand outside the physical reality and outside the scientific method. Mufti Shamail, in his eagerness to reject the scientific method, creeps into the embrace of “Pure Logic” and “Pure Reason”, i.e. completely abstract logic and reason that has no material grounding — floating in the realm of ideas and fantasies like dementors, capable of transcending the natural world into the supernatural sphere. Any school student can tell that logic and reason are abstracted and generalized from the material reality and act as tools to understand this material reality in a more scientific and definitive manner. But, once you have assumed something beyond the boundaries of the physical world as a given and, at the same time, divorced logic and reason from scientific method and material reality, you can then use logic and reason whimsically, according to your own fantasies to support your other-worldly arguments and prove the existence of a supernatural being. This is precisely what Mufti Shamail does from the very beginning itself.

Undoubtedly, Mufti Shamail knew very well that in a debate like this, concepts like Big Bang and Evolution would invariably find their ways into the debate. Therefore, in a pre-emptive strike, he nullified the usage of these concepts by rejecting science altogether and severing logic and reason from the scientific method. But, the fact that Javed Akhtar let Mufti Shamail slip away with such erroneous presuppositions that shatter the very foundations of a logical debate only demonstrates his own feeble grasp over the scientific method. In fact, Javed Akhtar was honest enough to acknowledge that he was not going to debate with the help of science — which he is self-admittedly weak at, but with “common sense”! Alas, if only “common sense” could argue, we would not have to witness the torturous travesty of reason that we saw during the debate!

Let us make it clear at the very outset that the debate on the existence of God that we saw on Lallantop is, in its essence, nothing more than a mediocre reiteration of the old debate between materialism and idealism. All the arguments, or rather sophistries, from both sides, in their crux, boil down to the primary question of primacy of matter or idea, of being or consciousness. The materialist worldview, notwithstanding its different strands, believes that matter is primary and ideas are derived from matter, and can change matter in return. The idealist worldview, in spite of its many subsections, believe that idea is primary and matter is just a manifestation of ideas. This is the kernel of the whole debate, which Javed Akhtar seemingly failed to understand.

𝐎𝐧 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐦, 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐲, 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 “𝐍𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐁𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠”

The core argument of Mufti Shamail is that everything — from a plastic ball, to flowers and a car — is created by someone. So, by extrapolating this argument, he reaches the conclusion that the universe must also have been created by someone. This a classic Creationist theory propounded by the high priests of every religion. The existence of everything and every phenomenon is determined by a cause or a reason. In other words, everything is contingent or dependent on some other thing, without which it cannot come into existence. Then, Mufti Shamail says that we cannot infinitely go back in the contingencies, i.e. we cannot keep going back from one cause to its cause and then to its cause ad infinitum, because in that case we won't exist. We have to stop at one point in this long chain of causality and that will be the absolute cause of everything, or in the words of Mufti Shamail, the "Necessary Being". This "Necessary Being" is the only independent entity, not dependent on anything else. It is the creator of all creations, the creators of space and time itself — and hence the only eternal entity. This quest to find the "Necessary Being" or the ultimate creator is nothing but a way to limit the extent of the material world and find the first-cause in some idea. Not only idealists but also mechanical materialists often adhere to this concept of first-cause, as exemplified by the Newtonian concept of "first impulse". If we flip through the pages of history, we find that many scientists and philosophers, from a consistent materialist and dialectical materialist standpoint, have refuted this claim of first-cause. From Democritus and Epicurus to Diderot and Marx, from Oparin, Lewontin and Bernal to Sakata, Yukawa and Taketani — all have held that matter in motion is the only absolute category, that the process of matter coming into being and passing away is the only eternal phenomenon.

Mufti Shamail axiomatically declares that infinite regress of causes is not possible in the real, physical world, without caring to explain why it is not possible. He doesn't explain why matter in eternal motion is ontologically impossible. Neither does Javed Akhtar have the philosophical and scientific rigour to drag Mufti onto this fundamental question. Today, the Big Bang has become such a widely accepted scientific theory that not many theologians can reject its veracity. Therefore, instead of explicitly rejecting the Big Bang, they now exploit the fact that what existed before the Big Bang is still unknown to claim that God or the "Necessary Being" created the universe through the Big Bang. On the other hand, consistent and dialectical materialists assert that even if space-time itself was created after the Big Bang, whatever existed prior to it was not outside the material world. Even if only a field existed before the Big Bang, it still is part of the material world — when we define matter as a philosophical category and not necessarily as a physical category. In fact, the Casimir effect, i.e. fluctuations in the quantum vacuum and the presence of Dark Energy and Dark Matter do point towards the incompleteness of the Big Bang model and towards what existed “Before the Big Bang”. Science has no qualms in saying that in spite of these phenomena hinting at a material existence before the Big Bang, we don't yet definitively know what existed before the Big Bang. However, the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge avows that even if it is unknown today, it can certainly be known in the future.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧

In the sphere of the development of knowledge, the contradiction between the known and the unknown is continuously present, and this contradiction is itself dynamic. What is unknown today becomes known tomorrow; yet by that time a new horizon of the unknown has already been revealed. The constant breaking of the known into the unknown and the known, and simultaneously the continual breaking of the unknown into the known and the unknown, together with the uninterrupted contradiction between them—this is the movement of knowledge; this is the movement of science. Through this contradiction between the known and the unknown, not only does our knowledge of the present expand — both extensively as well as intensively — but so does our understanding of the past and how the universe developed.

Idealists replace the unknown with a "Necessary Being", with an Absolute Idea or with a God — as Mufti Shamail does in the debate. For him, just because today we do not definitively know what existed before the Big Bang, the infinite regress of causes collapses at that point, and he then smuggles in the idea of the "Necessary Being" to fill that unknown. Agnostics mystify the unknown and claim that the unknown can never be fully known. As opposed to the Idealists and the Agnostics, consistent and dialectical materialists claim that every unknown can be known, but that in turn will produce a new unknown. Matter is perpetually in motion. That means our material world is perpetually changing, and by the time we gain knowledge about a process, that process itself is changed. In other words, our cognition of the material world lags behind the changes in the material objective world itself. Therefore, for consistent and dialectical materialists, there is no eternal Absolute Truth. Absolute Truth at any given moment is the sum total of infinite relative truths at that moment. But, at the very next moment, the Absolute Truth changes as the sum total of infinite relative truths changes due to change in the material world itself. Therefore, science never claims to have all the answers at a given moment. The only assertion made by science is that everything is knowable. Religion, on the other hand, claims to possess all the answers because it never asks the correct questions.

Dialectical Materialists also assert that as long as the aspect of the unknown remains the dominant aspect in our social lives, recourse in some or the other form of metaphysical and supernatural reality will remain. In other words, till the time social insecurity and economic uncertainty persist, religion in some form or the other will continue to exist. In the primitive and slave societies people prayed to the Nature-Gods because their whole existence was at the mercy of blind forces of nature. Similarly, in capitalist society, although we have a better understanding of the natural laws of motion and have been able to tame the blind forces of nature much more than primitive societies, the uncertainty produced by the exploitative capitalist system persists. This vulnerability and insecure destinies of people push them into the embrace of some kind of supernatural entity or mysticism which can help them navigate through these uncertainties. This will continue till the time people are conscious of the laws of motion of society and can change the society and their lives with this consciousness.

The contradiction between the known and the unknown has manifested itself in class societies not only as a struggle between Materialism and Idealism, but also as a struggle between Religion and Science. No matter how bitter a pill it might be to swallow, the fact remains that religion has often persecuted and repressed those who stood by the side of science because science often challenged, directly or indirectly, the existing oppressive social relations and the authorities of the God and the ruling class who drew their legitimacy from God or some divine power. So, when Mufti Shamail says in the debate that religion doesn't hinder science — it is a blatantly false statement. Scientists from Ibn Sina to Ibn Rushd and from Galileo to Bruno hold testimony to this fact. In India, weren't the writings of Charavak, Kanad and Aryabhatta systematically suppressed and sidelined so as to prevent their radical ideas from reaching the masses. Mufti Shamail also makes a bogus distinction between Science and "Scientism" and says that religion doesn't hinder science but "Scientism", i.e. the idea that scientific method is the only valid way to gain knowledge. We leave it up to the learned readers to decide if obstructing the scientific method isn't equivalent to obstructing science, then what is?

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐍𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲

History moves through the dialectics of chance and necessity. Necessity refers to broad objective conditions and the laws of motion defining the limits of these conditions. Chance refers to a particular and concrete form through which necessity manifests itself. Necessity exists only through a multiplicity of chances, and chance is conditioned, limited and structured by necessity. In other words, within a broad framework of objective conditions defined by concrete laws, various arrangements of matter in different forms are possible. These different forms might seem arbitrary and accidental, but in the last instance are governed by the objective laws of the broader framework. Freedom means understanding the necessity in its essence, understanding the laws of motions that govern our social and natural worlds and changing the society and the nature in a conscious way. But, unless we grasp the contradiction between chance and necessity we are bound to fall into the trap of either determinism — as seen in the case of Mufti Shamail where he believes everything is predetermined, or indeterminism and subjectivism — as seen in the case of Javed Akhtar where he goes on to say things like reproductive process is also purely random where a sperm randomly attaches to an egg. What Javed Akhtar doesn't understand is that for sperms and eggs to be produced and a sperm to attach to an egg and for zygote to develop, it can only happen when some other preconditions are already met and this process is manifested only through some concrete laws of human biology. If that was not the case, why combinations of certain chromosomes in the egg and the sperm produce the offspring of a certain sex could never be explained and sex of the offspring would be purely an accident.

On the other hand, Mufti Shamail is amused at the perfection of the universe and declares that such a complex system cannot work so perfectly if it was not created and operated by the "Necessary Being". When some necessary preconditions were met, hydrogen and helium cooled down to form Nebulae which in turn formed stars and galaxies. Now, which stars will be produced first is a matter of chance operating within broader laws of cosmology. At a certain point of our cosmic evolution complex inorganic compounds emerged from simple molecules. Now, which complex inorganic compounds will first be produced and with what particular characteristics is a matter of chance, playing out within the laws of inorganic chemistry. Under some other certain conditions, these complex inorganic compounds arranged themselves in a particular way to form organic compounds. Now, in what particular ways this arrangement happens is a matter of chance manifesting within the broader laws of organic chemistry. In the hydrothermal vents where necessary conditions of life were fulfilled by availability of warm water and conducive energy gradients and sufficient concentration of organic molecules, the first single-celled organisms emerged. Now, what particular attributes these single-celled organisms had was a matter of chance playing out within broader laws of bio-chemistry. Among the different species of apes in the tropical rainforests of Africa, why only one particular species separated out, came into the Savannahs and became the ancestors of humans is a matter of chance operating under the limits of broader necessary objective conditions. Mufti Shamail negates the role played by chance or spontaneity completely. In order to prove his contingency theory and impossibility of infinite regress of causes, another cleric from the audience commented that the fact that Javed Akhtar is a poet means there must be another poet who must have taught him poetry, and that poet also must have a teacher and this sequence goes back continuously till we reach upto the first poet who was not taught by anyone, and that means he was created by the "Necessary Being" or the God. Had this not been the case, according to this cleric, Javed Akhtar wouldn't have been a poet! Here, the point missed by Shamail and his accomplice is that poetry emerged at a particular juncture in history. The first poetry must be a specific arrangement of words in a qualitatively new way that did not exist till then. This arrangement of words in a new form is a matter of chance which, of course, was operating within the limits set by the laws of motion of society and language. The same logic applies to the emergence of every new phenomenon in society as well as in nature. Undoubtedly, a dialectical materialist cannot reify and essentialize spontaneity. But to discard the role played by spontaneity and chance altogether would be a methodological myopia.

Here, the famous quote of Einstein that "God doesn't play dice" also rings in our ears. Of course, Einstein was not a theist but what he meant here was that in nature everything is predetermined. This determinism was Einstein's reaction to the subjectivism and agnosticism of the Copenhagen school in the debate around the uncertainty principle. We won't go into the details of this debate, but would reassert that if this dialectics of chance and necessity is not understood properly let alone the Mufti Shamails and Javed Akhtars, even the greatest of scientists like Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg can fall into the pit of determinism, subjectivism and agnosticism and give way to either objective or subjective idealism.

𝐎𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐚

A good amount of time in the debate was dedicated to, or rather wasted on, the question of why evil exists and who decides what is moral and what is immoral. The main problem from both sides on this question was that the categories of 'good', 'evil', 'moral' and 'immoral' are treated as some absolute, eternal, ethereal categories innate to humans. These categories are cut-off from their history and whole point, that these categories emerged at certain conjunctures of human society and continuously changes according to changing social structures and social relations, is completely missed. For example, in the primitive hunting-gathering societies hoarding and appropriating more than required for bare survival was considered immoral and was socially discouraged. But in the capitalist society the ability to appropriate more and more without participating in the production process is celebrated. In the primitive societies, tracing the lineage of a child through its mother was considered a 'good' and 'desirable' thing. But in the class societies it was considered a 'bad' and 'undesirable' thing. In a feudal society, the idea of equality between a God-ordained king and the common masses was an 'immoral' idea, whereas in the capitalist society formal and legal equality between the ruler and the ruled was established and was considered a 'good' thing by the progressive bourgeoisie.

Similarly, God also has a history. There was a time in the past where there were no religion and no God. As George Thomson says, in the primitive societies magic and Totemism encapsulated religion, science and art within it in undifferentiated form. Then came the Pagan religions — Hellenic Pagan religions around the Mediterranean and Germanic Paganism in the interiors of Europe. These Pagan religions were polytheistic and worshiped the natural forces. Pagan religions gave way to Christianity around the time of the disintegration of slave society and emergence of feudalism in Europe and the Mediterranean coast. In India, what can loosely be called Hinduism emerged in its embryonic state in the early Vedic period when the Indian subcontinent was transforming from a hunting-gathering society to a sedentarized agricultural society. It was consolidated to an extent in the later Vedic period and changed qualitatively under different social structures. Although Javed Akhtar asymptotically alluded to the idea of changing nature of religion, he could not drive home the fundamental idea that God itself has a history due to his own mechanical materialist worldview.

The moral values and virtues of a particular society depend on the social relations of that society, i.e. on the ways in which production, distribution, social division of labour and state power are organized. The evils of today's world are products of the capitalist and imperialist structures. In a society in which production is social but appropriation is private, where production is done only for maximizing the profit and not to ensure good humane life for the people, exploitation, social oppression, poverty, malnutrition, hunger and wars will remain a permanent feature. Therefore, dozens of children dying every day in Gaza is not God's way of taking a test and recompensing them later, as Mufti Shamail thinks. Well, this statement is so sickening and inhumane that no sane human being can accept it. To imagine thousands of dead children in Gaza as mere subjects of a test to judge who is good and who is bad, or to say that the all-knowing God is giving these kids injection whose benefits we cannot comprehend but must have faith in, are not mere theological assertions but obscene and perverted statements that must not have any place in a self-proclaimed civilized debate. But, the sorry state of affairs is that even Javed Akhtar was speechless on the question of why children are dying in Gaza. The fact that the Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine was a conspiracy to serve the imperialist interest of the US and other advanced capitalist countries is beyond the comprehension of the liberal bourgeois mind of Javed Akhtar. Moreover, this twisted and depraved line of “argumentation” let the Zionists and imperialists go off scot free for the genocide and misery they are inflicting upon millions of Palestinians and makes mockery of the Palestinian national liberation struggle. Consequently, Akhtar just managed to blabber some liberal gibberish that "most people would like to live in harmony and just some people play foul". Why exactly is Israel playing foul? — Javed Akhtar has no answers to this.

 𝐎𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐉𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐀𝐤𝐡𝐭𝐚𝐫

Javed Akhtar is a liberal poet with a deductivist, empiricist, positivist and mechanical materialist worldview. As mentioned above, he has no solid foundation in philosophy or scientific method and thus employs only "common sense" to fight this "ultimate battle". This is demonstrated many a times during the course of the debate. For example, when he says the most absurd statement of the entire debate that "the majority decides what is good and what is bad", it exposes his empiricist outlook. It was an unfortunate sight that a person claiming to represent materialism was so easily cornered by an idealist on this question. The majority of the people can definitely support an incorrect thing or a wrong person at a particular moment. What is correct and what is incorrect is not determined by what people think at one moment but what is in the interests of the common working people. Science, history and our worldview becomes those analytical lenses through which we decide what is in the interests of the people and what is not. Coming to the second most ludicrous argument that he pulled out of his dense quiver of inanity and shot at his liberal supporters sitting in the audience was drawing an analogy between religion and alcohol. He claimed that consuming alcohol in moderation —i.e. two pegs a day— is apparently good for health but the problem with alcohol is that most people don't stop at just two pegs and keep consuming more and that creates all the mess. Similarly, religion — if consumed in moderation is fine, according to Javed Akhtar, but the problem is people can't consume it in moderation and they get completely drunk on religion and create all the evils in the society. First of all, it seems like our esteemed Javed Akhtar couldn't control his daily intake of the sweet elixir of liberalism! This is a classic liberal argument that anything in moderation is fine and anything in excess becomes a problem. A liberal wants exploitation in moderation, poverty in moderation, killing of children in moderation, war in moderation, justice in moderation and so on and so forth. Furthermore, throughout the debate we saw a glorification of Europe by Javed Akhtar which again betrayed his bourgeois liberal fantasy. There are many other liberal and mechanical materialist inanities spewed by Javed Akhtar in the debate, all of which we can't elaborate here.

It will only suffice to say that in the long history of debate and struggle between Materialism and Idealism spanning thousands of years, never was Materialism so embarrassed as it was in this debate on Lallantop. All the followers of Mufti Shamail who are celebrating the outcome of this debate as the definitive victory of faith and theists over science and atheists must remember that it was a debate between the unequals. Between a consistent objective idealist well trained in theology and a liberal poet—cum—"commonsensical" mechanical materialist who hasn't even reached up to the standards of the 18th century radical bourgeois materialists like Diderot and Voltaire, let alone dialectical materialism of the 19th century. In encounters like this, as evident in history, consistent idealism triumphs over mechanical materialism. Therefore, it is not a victory of idealism over materialism but the victory of consistent idealism over a poor and ill-prepared version of mechanical materialism.

Here, we would also want to make it clear that we do not ascribe atheism to be historically a progressive thing in itself and by itself. We do not believe that just being an atheist necessarily makes a person historically progressive. The only test of our progressiveness is our commitment to truth and whether we stand with the oppressors or the oppressed. If only being an atheist could make a person progressive, then Savarkar and Jinnah would also have been progressive! If atheism meant progressiveness, then Christopher Hitchens — one of the "four horsemen" of new atheism who supported the American invasion of Iraq , and esSENCE Global — a Kerala based rationalist group supporting Israel, would also be deemed progressive!

𝐀𝐧 𝐀𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐨 𝐋𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐩

This essay is written by ‘Scientists for Society’ as an intervention in the recent debate organized by ‘Lallantop’ on the topic 'Does God Exist?' ‘Scientists for Society’ is a forum of socially concerned scientists, professors and students who are committed to defend and propagate science and scientific approach among the common masses and for the common masses. Therefore, we hope that ‘Lallantop’ would adhere to democratic principles of a debate and publish our intervention on their platforms.