Does God Exist: The Akhtar-Mufti Debate

The theist argument:

• Burden of proof lies with both theist and atheist.
• Science cannot prove or disprove God.
• Universe cannot come from nothing. God is the necessary being.
• Absolute morality and justice is evidence of God.
• The most perfect being conceivable is God.
• Universe is fine tuned for our existence. That proves God.
• There is no purpose and meaning without God.

The Javed Akhtar (atheist)- Mufti Shamail (theist) debate was a bit of a disappointment for me. I expected the arguments to have more depth, but it revolved for two long hours in the surface.

People often ask me, “Tu Nastik hai?”, “Are you an atheist?” (Though nastik does not technically mean atheist)

Well… I don’t call myself anything. If someone calls me an atheist, I don’t protest. Some might call me agnostic as well. It’s fine.

I can say for sure that I am not religious. I am a rational person. I look for evidence before I consider something as valid truth.

I prefer not to be associated with cults of ‘ists’ and ‘isms’, because cult makes you blind.

Religion to me is a cult just like Marx-ism, Scient-ism and even I dare say National-ism. Cult makes you blindly believe in human made ideas. Fantasy becomes truth. Your rationality gets clouded and truth gets hidden.

I try to be rational without being a rational-ist.

Truth, to me, is a good thing to chase.

So when someone asks me, “Do you believe in God?”, my counter question is, “What do you mean by god?”

God means different things to different people.
A personal god with human like attributes who listen to your prayer and punish you for doing things he prohibits, is irrational. I do not believe praying at temples, mosques or churches help people more than god-less compassion meditation at the corner of one’s house. It’s the processes going on in the mind, and nothing supernatural.

But what about a pantheistic god, like the one Einstein believed in, like the one in Advaidya philosophy of Upanishad, or Sunyata of Buddhism? May be! It cannot deny its possibility.

Do I believe it?

It’s definitely not my faith. But I keep it in the realms of possibility.

Not Nastik but Jigyasu.

Before going into the atheist-theist debate let me clarify the difference between atheist and Nashik.

We often loosely translate Nastika from Sanskrit and Hindi as ‘Atheist,’ but they are fundamentally different concepts.

Atheism originated as a Western idea, in opposition to the belief in an Abrahamic God. Nastikas, on the other hand, are those who do not accept the authority of the Vedas. Buddhists, Jains, Ajivikas, and Charvakas reject Vedic authority and are thus Nastika, yet they are not necessarily ‘atheist’ in the Western sense. The Charvakas are probably the closest to pure materialism.

In the same way, Astikas, those who accept the authority of the Vedas, are not necessarily theists. According to the Samkhya school of thought, Purusha and Prakriti are the two eternal, distinct, and fundamental realities, and not a creator God. The same applies to the Advaita school, where the ultimate reality is non-dual, and pantheistic. The Dvaita and Vishishtadvaita schools are the closest Astika philosophies to Western theism.

Indian philosophy has debated every possible angle of truth. This is why it is often described not as a religion, but as Dharma. Dharma is derived from dhr, which means to hold. It is the inner essence. One’s Dharma can be Nastika and theistic, just as another’s can be Astika and non-theistic.

Most modern ideas of God and religion are heavily influenced by Western thought. What many people call their own ‘culture’ is often just a reflection of these Western imports. In the process, the Indian tradition of rational inquiry has been sidelined, leading to the modern preoccupation with temples and personal deities. Insulting a deity only carries weight if that deity is viewed as a personal, anthropomorphic God, yet, outside of the Dvaita and Vishishtadvaita tradition, few Indian philosophical schools focused on such a concept.

Infact most temples were built in India during the “Urban Decay” phase ( (c. 600 – 1200 CE), a term famously proposed by historian R.S. Sharma. It follows the collapse of the Gupta Empire and the transition into the Early Medieval period. Without thriving trade, the economy became almost entirely land-based. This led to the rise of the Feudal System (Land Grants) and the construction of temples as new centers of social and economic power in rural areas. After that India got flooded with Abrahamic ideas.

That’s when Astika became Theist and Nastika Atheist.

“I have no hatred or dislike, nor affiliation or liking, nor greed, nor delusion, nor pride or haughtiness, nor feelings of envy or jealousy. I have no duty (dharma), nor any money (Artha), nor any desire (kama), nor even liberation (moksha). I am indeed, That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva, love and pure consciousness.” – Nirvana Shatakam

Coming back to the debate. Mufti made 5 key arguments to justify the existence of god. 

1. His first argument was that the Burden of Proof lies with both the theist and atheist. His logic goes like this: If someone says that there is no one in the next room then the burden of proof is as much with those who deny as with those who accept. God exists because atheists cannot proof that god does not exist. Why I think this is irrelevant: Firstly, this specific example is a falsifiable claim. One can easily go to the room and prove if someone is there or not. Claim of god is non-falsifiable. Second, if I made the first claim that there is no one in the room then the burden of proof is on me. Since theists made the first claim with which atheist does not agree, the burden of proof is entirely on the theist. If someone claimed that there is someone in the room whom you cannot see or proof his existence, but “I know for sure he is there because I experienced his presence,” then the burden of proof is entirely with the person who made that claim.
2. According to Mufti’s second argument science deals exclusively with empirical, physical, and measurable realities. God, by definition, is a non-physical and metaphysical reality. Therefore, science neither has the tools nor the processes to prove or disprove God’s existence. This view echoes philosophical naturalism critiques but overlooks science’s success in explaining phenomena once deemed supernatural. God of the Gap is a valid argument. If God interacts causally with the universe then science definitely has the tool to test those interactions. In fact, one of the strong theist claims that universe cannot create beautiful and perfect things without intent and intelligence is already disproved by science. Dismissing science to shield divinity is an escapist mindset.
3. The third and the strongest argument Mufti made was using logic to claim God as a necessary being. This is known as the Cosmological Argument. All observed entities appear contingent (dependent on prior cause), leading to a necessary uncaused causer. Existence of universe depends on time and space, and hence it needs a Creator who is outside space and time. If someone created it, and there is no infinite regression, then by logic there must be God, the necessary being. Dependent origination and philosophy of Sunyata counters this argument beautifully. Everything arises interdependently, empty of standalone essence, eliminating the need for a first cause. Causality has an arrow of time >cause before effect. Physics laws are time-symmetric. So: (a) Is causality an illusion of the 2nd law of thermodynamics? (b) Can there be an uncaused first cause? If every action has an equal and opposite reaction, what happens to the uncaused when it makes the first cause? (c) If we can imagine something as an uncaused cause, that could well be the universe of which we are part. The universe could be self-caused and self-explanatory. If god can be uncaused, why not the universe? The theist argument is based on the classical idea of intelligence and creation. With new studies on quantum mechanics, chaos theory and emergence we now have much better picture of the universe that needs neither intelligence nor creator to exist. The theist argument is outdated. Matter and antimatter can come from vacuum randomly without being dependent on prior cause. Patterns and beautiful designs does not need an intelligent designer, it is innate to nature. Some things form just because they are the most efficient designs, like the beautiful sedimentary structures created by deposition of sediments carried by wind or water; same with ice crystals, bee hive etc. One might wonder how something as complex as consciousness and intelligence can emerge from simple matter. But emergent properties are more common than we think. A good example is water, which has the property of extinguishing fire, even though its components, hydrogen and oxygen, are flammable and supports combustion respectively. Emergent properties arise from the interaction of simpler parts, not from the properties of the parts themselves. The whole is more than the sum of parts. Many animals, such as ants, display a mechanism of coordination called stigmergy. Stigmergy is an indirect communication method that allows groups of simple beings to achieve complex results. For example, ants use stigmergy to find the shortest path between their nest and a food source. An individual ant would be clueless about direction. But a group of ants display swarm intelligence, thanks to their pheromone trails. Science has shown that that intelligence can emerge from the interaction of simple non-intelligent beings, without any central coordination or exterior control. Simple ants have created complex intelligent agricultural civilizations long before humans by the process of emergence. Our brain produce intelligence in the same way from simpler non-intelligent individual neurons. Dependent origination. Darwin showed that nature can create intelligent beings through competence without the need for comprehension. Random mutation and the preferential death of the unfit are the driving forces behind Darwinian evolution. It has no plan or blueprint to work towards, making it a simple but profound idea that has been validated in laboratories. So intelligence, intelligent beings and super intelligent god are all overrated. God just is an added complexity that is not necessary. If God qualifies as uncaused despite complexity, so might spacetime and universe  itself—Occam’s razor favors the simpler unembellished reality over adding mindful agency. The first cause as an omnipotent and omniscient God that itself is without cause is special pleading. 
4. Mufti’s idea that absolute morality proves existence of God is more emotional than logical. “Why is there suffering if there is no god?” he asks. Absolute morality, like r@p€, incest, lying, stealing etc. exists in all societies showing that it’s absolute and thus needs a non-human creator. He goes on to claim that these are not decided my majority because if majority decided that r@p€ is acceptable, then we all know intuitively that it’s not moral. Just because majority Germans believed in Nazism does not make it right. I think this is a very shallow argument. It is not about what majority thinks but about individual freedom, equality and liberty. These are all values that make a society work by preventing anarchy. Society is man made. None of these values are absolute when one looks at nature. Prakriti and Sanskriti are different things, and not absolute. How cultural memes spread and why some values seem universal is a well studied science. His view that Evil is a divine plan that grants human free will and ethical responsibility is a weak effort to justify tragedy. The killing of innocent children in war, rape,  disease and suffering exists because god needs evil to test us? Who needs such god?
5. The final argument that justice is rooted in divine and natural law is the weakest argument. How exactly is the existence of justice presupposes a necessary being or a higher source? Mufti is searching for a lasting or universal meaning that is not there. Like morality, justice too is merely a construct of the human mind, even though it might seem universal. It is like convergent evolution, because nature prefers efficiency. This is the is-ought fallacy which fails to recognise the logical gap between facts and values.

Mufti sarcastically comment that if Nazis were wrong because majority in the world though it was wrong, then god must exist because majority also believe in god. What he forgot is that majority does not believe in his version of god and his religious text, so does that mean his god is false god? If you try that logic with all gods, then all gods would be false gods. Thus goes the atheist saying, “We agree mostly, I just believe in one less God than you”.

There are other arguments given by theists that Akhtar-Mufti debate missed.

Ontological: The argument begins with the premise that God is the greatest being that can be conceived. It then defines greatness as the sum of all perfections, including existence. Therefore, God must exist. The assumption here is that greatness and goodness are absolute truths similar to physical quantities like tallness or largeness. You can always imagine an object that is the tallest of all objects in the universe or the biggest of all objects in the universe. So, the greatest possible of all attributes is God. But why should that apply to subjective descriptions like greatness and goodness? They are more like rock-paper-scissors. Paper is better than rock and scissor is better than paper does not mean that scissor is better than rock. There is no need to extend perfection, greatness, and truth to its single highest form. As a parody one can define a “perfect island” as that than which no greater island is conceivable. We can imagine it, but it’s not true.

Teleological: The argument begins with the observation that the natural world is full of complex and orderly systems. For example, the human body is a complex system of organs and tissues that work together to sustain life. The solar system is a complex system of planets and moons that orbit the sun. The universe itself is a complex system of galaxies and stars. The teleological argument then concludes that the order and complexity of the natural world are evidence of a designer, which is God. Evolution and Emergence can also perfectly explain complexity based on ‘competence without cognition’ and ratchet effect. Additionally, this can also explain the imperfections, redundancies and unnecessary complexities, showing that we are a product of trial and error, and evolution rather than intelligent design.

Fine Tuning: The fine-tuned universe argument posits that precise physical constants (e.g., gravitational force, electron mass) are improbably calibrated for life, implying intentional design by God. This argument assumes that life is perfect and the life we know is the only definition of life. We evolved in the thin veneer of  earth’s atmosphere, hence we are fine tuned only to survive in that small volume of earths atmosphere. Life not fine tuned to survive in this universe, but only in a negligible area where it evolved. Infact, take us back in time to 3 billion years ago, and we would not survive in this very planet. We evolved in the physical constants of our universe and hence we are fine tuned for it, and not the other way around. 

What then is the point/purpose: I think it’s our need to find a meaning and purpose in everything that leads to our believe in supernatural/God, etc. Then, based on our anchoring bias, we believe in a particular religion/scripture. Then we look for evidence/logic to support our belief. Finding purpose in everything is anthropomorphization. We tend to anthropomorphize the universe. Order and complexity can evolve in a closed system without a purpose and in the absence of an external creator.

Religion itself is part of evolution that helped us form in-groups. Most religious texts are written in a way to precisely do that. Same with other concepts from totem to nation. Religion acts as a glue that keeps a group together and believers can fight and die for each other. Altruism evolved as a group survival strategy, and religion promoted in-group altruism. Religion may also give people peace and purpose, and a watchful eye keeps people moral. There are positives that may come out of religion. But that does not prove the existence of god.

On the flip side, humans have the tendency to do highly immoral acts to out-groups once they find a religious justification. And faith does not necessarily make one happy or improve living conditions on average as seen in the data below.

The problem is not religion, but ideology that blinds free thinking.

Think of Nationalism. Spitting on national flag, that’s just a modern symbol of nation, can lead to war. But people freely spit on the national soil, and no one blinks an eye. Ideology can be political too, like Communism. It even has a holy book. Religion is one such ideology, and probably the most potent, that can blind people.

What the graph below really shows is that countries where people can think freely are generally happier. And it is easier to brainwash people towards a particular ideology in poorer countries.

The entire idea of God, of a universe requiring a creator, is based on two flawed assumptions:

1. Since we create things, we must have a creator.
2. The existence of intelligent design necessitates an intelligent designer.

It seems as though humans have created steam engines, the internet, and even children. But have we?

In reality, we do not create things, and, we have never experienced anything being “created” in the true sense of the word. What we perceive as creation is merely transformation. Because our brains are pattern-recognition specialists, wired to attach identities to specific arrangements, we believe we have created a sculpture, a machine, or an AI. In truth, we have simply changed a pattern: we converted the chemical potential energy of coal into the kinetic energy of a piston, moved electrons through silicon, and rearranged nutrients from food into life.

The “A created B” model is a flawed bias.
There is no creator.
The truth is that A transformed into B because of C, where C is the cause.

If “God” is simply the cause, then such a God is not an omnipotent, omniscient, or independent being. Its very existence would depend on the existence of A and B; therefore, it cannot be the “creator” of either.

One might ask: “Then how did the Big Bang create the universe?” But that is a misconception. The beginning was simply a point where all previous information was lost, and in physics, a “vacuum” is far from “nothing.”

The second argument concerns intelligence.

A steam engine is an intelligent design that cannot simply “pop” into existence, even if the ingredients are present. If you see a beautiful sculpture, you assume an intelligent being crafted it. We often extend this logic to the universe: how can such a complex design exist without an intelligent designer?

The watch is complex, therefore a Watchmaker intended it. Even rearrangement needs an intelligent re-arranger. This shifts the argument from an “intelligent creator” to an “intelligent designer.”

However, we now have proof that intelligence can emerge from non-intelligent components. Ants build complex civilizations without being individually “intelligent.” The swarm intelligence of birds does not require an “intelligent” leader. An intelligent brain does not require intelligent neurons.

AI and Darwinian evolution demonstrate competence without cognition, the ability to generate complexity that mimics intelligent design without a conscious mind behind it.
Intelligence is overrated. The manifestation of intelligent design requires no prior cognition.

The Creator is a grand illusion.

In my view it is better to be moral, compassionate and empathetic to all because that is a good thing to do, then just because you are selfish and afraid of a divine justice.

And for purpose? Trying to understand the truth through rationality and objectivity, without the anchoring bias of religion and scriptures, is a good starting point.

Who knows, you might find God that way too!

Summary:

1.  “Since theists made the first claim with which an atheist does not agree, the burden of proof is entirely on the theist.”

2.  “Dismissing science to shield divinity is an escapist mindset; if God interacts with the universe, science has the tools to test those interactions.”

3.  “If God can be uncaused, why not the universe? Occam’s razor favors a simpler unembellished reality over adding mindful agency.”

4.  “Patterns and beautiful designs do not need an intelligent designer; they are innate to nature.”

5.  “Intelligence can emerge from the interaction of simple non-intelligent beings, without any central coordination or exterior control.”

6.  “Values like freedom and equality are constructs that make a society work by preventing anarchy—they are not absolute divine laws.”

7.  “Like morality, justice is merely a construct of the human mind, even though it might seem universal.”

8.  “Life is not fine-tuned for the universe; we evolved in the physical constants of our universe and hence we are fine-tuned for it.”

9.  “Finding purpose in everything is anthropomorphization. Order and complexity can evolve in a closed system without an external creator.”

10. “It is better to be moral, compassionate, and empathetic because it is a good thing to do, rather than being afraid of a divine justice.”

The debate:

https://www.youtube.com/live/pythOMyPcHw?si=RspEYac7uApaE0Tl