The religion debate

Stephen Fry appeared on RTE's 'The Meaning of Life' on Sunday evening where he voiced his views on religion labelling God as ''utterly evil, capricious and monstrous.'' Fry has not shied away from the topic of God in the past and has been vocal in his association with Atheism. 

In response, in Russell Brand's latest instalment of 'Trews', his YouTube series where he weighs in on current affairs, Brand objects to Fry's ''literalism'' approach to religion and he says ''science can explain the mechanics of the universe... but can it ever explain the why? The answer is no''.  

Russell Brand adds ''What we all want to know is, is there a reason for us being here and what is the nature of the universe? What is the nature of our consciousness?'' He goes on to discuss a book by Robert Lanza, an American doctor and scientist which addresses the flaws in received Physics. Lanza states in a passage from the book that had ''the Big Bang been one-part-in-a-million more powerful it would have rushed out too fast for the galaxies and life to develop.'' He goes on to reference an additional 2 of 200 physical parameters to argue that it is difficult to believe they are random due to their precise nature.

Whilst the physics of the Big Bang is so complex I will never fully understand it, I can't help but feel that the ideology of creationism and the belief that for circumstances to require such precision the formation of the universe must be a deliberate act is somewhat narcissistic. I often think that because as a species we are so developed we often believe ourselves to be much more important and relevant than we are. 

Although I cannot argue that the extent of coincidences that went into the construction of our universe are unfathomable I still see them as just coincidences. It's scary to know that had one of 200 different factors been even minimally different our universe wouldn't exist and neither would our atoms or stars or our species, I still believe us to be irrelevant. We're a lucky accident just the same as the merging of a specific sperm and specific egg made my conscious self and not a wholly different child is a lucky accident for me.

I think the concept of God is the human race's assumption that we are more important than we are and therefore we must have been purposely created rather than a convenient coincidence for none other than ourselves. Russell Brand's dismissal of Science as it offers no 'why' is actually the evidence for the lack of a God to me. There's no answer because there's no question. There doesn't have to be a why because we're just being presumptuous.

Apart from the grandness and complexity of the universe being baffling if it held no life there wouldn't need to be any justification as to why all the factors that went into it's creation are all perfectly exact enough to hold life. We think of the universe as this amazing thing that must have a reason for existence just because it's our reason for existence. The human race serves no purpose to anyone or anything other than to ourselves so therefore there's no justification for our creation. We purely exist because we exist, we're a lucky accident.