The Parable Of Life After Delivery

 The Parable Of Life After Delivery

Inside a mother’s womb, two unborn twins floated in their tiny, warm world. One day, a conversation sparked between them.  

“Do you believe in life after delivery?” asked the first twin, curiosity flickering in his mind.  

The second twin hesitated but then answered with conviction, “Of course! There must be something beyond this. Maybe we’re here to prepare for a greater existence.”  

The first twin scoffed. “Nonsense. What kind of life could exist outside? This is all there is.”  

“I don’t know exactly,” the second twin mused, “but I imagine there will be more light and perhaps we will walk with our own legs and eat with our mouths.”  

The first twin burst into laughter. “Absurd! Walking? Eating with a mouth? That’s impossible! We survive through the umbilical cord. Life after delivery is a myth. The cord is too short to sustain us elsewhere.”  

The second twin remained thoughtful. “I think we will find a new way to live. Maybe things will be different.”  

“No one has ever come back from delivery,” the first twin countered. “Once it happens, life ends. The after-delivery world is unknown, dark and empty.”  

The second twin smiled. “But what if it’s not? What if it’s a place full of wonders? What if we finally meet Mother?”  

The first twin frowned. “Mother? You actually believe in Mother? Where is she? If she existed, we would see her.”  

The second twin, calm and patient, replied, “She is all around us. We live inside her. Without her, we wouldn’t exist.”  

The first twin shook his head. “I have never seen her. So, logically, she isn’t real.”  

The second twin closed his eyes, listening. “Sometimes, when we are quiet, when we truly listen, we can feel her presence. We can hear her voice through the beating of her heart. I believe one day, when delivery comes, we will see her and understand everything.”  

Moral: Just because something is beyond our current perception does not mean it does not exist. Some truths may only become evident when we reach a different stage of awareness.

[For atheists, the parable serves as a thought-provoking analogy about perception and belief.]

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 Ludicrous Arguments Against God?

Epicurus (341–270 BCE) - “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.” - Not from a book but preserved in Discourses by his follower Lactantius, summarizing his philosophical problem of evil.

Lucretius (c. 99–55 BCE) - “Nature is free from any master.” - From De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), Book I.

Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412–323 BCE) - No specific book; he mocked gods through actions and sayings recorded by Diogenes Laërtius in Lives of Eminent Philosophers.

Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) - “All religions are ancient monuments to ignorance.” - From The System of Nature (1770).

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) - “My own mind is my own church.” - From The Age of Reason (1794–1807), Part I.

Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) - “I had no need of that hypothesis [God].” - Not from a book; said in a conversation with Napoleon, recorded in historical accounts.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) - “God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof.” - From The Necessity of Atheism (1811), pamphlet.

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) - “God is the projection of human nature.” - From The Essence of Christianity (1841), Chapter I.

Karl Marx (1818–1883) - “Religion is the opium of the people.” - From A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843), Introduction.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) - “God is dead, and we have killed him.” - From The Gay Science (1882), Section 125, and later Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1891).

Thomas Huxley (1825–1895) - “I know of no evidence for a deity.” - Not from a single book; expressed in essays like Agnosticism (1889).

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) - “The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.” - From The Gods (1872), lecture.

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) - “Religion is an illusion.” - From The Future of an Illusion (1927).

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) - “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.” - From Androcles and the Lion (1912), Preface.

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) - “Religion is based primarily upon fear.” - From Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), essay.

H.G. Wells (1866–1946) - “God as a person is an idea that staggers me.” - From God the Invisible King (1917), critique of theistic concepts.

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) - “I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.” - From a 1930s speech, not a book; widely quoted.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) - “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the universe.” - Not from a book; from a 1929 telegram response to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) - “That God does not exist, I cannot deny.” - From Existentialism is a Humanism (1946), lecture-turned-book.

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) - “I am an atheist… I do not believe in God.” - Not from a single book; stated in interviews, e.g., Playboy (1964), consistent with Atlas Shrugged (1957) themes.

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) - “The Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.” - From I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), reflecting earlier sentiments.

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) - “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” - From Cosmos (1980), Chapter 1, applied to religious claims.

George Carlin (1937–2008) - “He loves you, but he’ll send you to burn forever if you disobey.” - From Jammin’ in New York (1992), stand-up special.

Richard Dawkins (1941–) - “God is a delusion.” - From The God Delusion (2006), title and central thesis.

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) - “It is not necessary to invoke God to set the universe going.” - From The Grand Design (2010), co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow.

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) - “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” - From God Is Not Great (2007), Chapter 10.

Daniel Dennett (1942–) - “Religion is a natural phenomenon, not a divine one.” - From Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006).

Sam Harris (1967–) - “Theology is ignorance with wings.” - From The End of Faith (2004), though exact phrasing varies in talks.

Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) - “With or without religion, good people do good… but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.” - From Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries (2001), essay “A Designer Universe?”.

Ricky Gervais (1961–) - “If you destroy all the evidence for every religion, only science would come back.” - Not from a book; from his stand-up Humanity (2018) and interviews. 

40 Famous Individuals who openly supported the Existence of God 

Plato (c. 427–347 BCE) - “The cause of the world must be an intelligent design.” - From Timaeus.

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) - “There must be a first cause, unmoved and eternal.” - From Metaphysics, Book XII.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) - “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.” - From Confessions, Book I.

Al-Ghazali (1058–1111) - Muslim philosopher. “God is the ultimate reality, and all existence depends on Him.” - From The Incoherence of the Philosophers (1095).

Rumi (1207–1273) - Muslim poet and Sufi mystic. “Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there… where God resides.” - From The Essential Rumi (collections, 13th century).

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) - “The existence of God can be proved in five ways.” - From Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 2.

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) - “In His will is our peace.” - From The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto III.

Kabir (c. 1398–1518) - Hindu-Muslim poet. “God is the breath of all breath… in every heart He dwells.” - From Songs of Kabir (oral tradition, later compiled).

Guru Nanak (1469–1539) - Founder of Sikhism, influenced by Hindu and Muslim thought. “There is but One God, His name is Truth.” - From Guru Granth Sahib, Japji Sahib.

Tulsidas (1532–1623) - Hindu poet. “God as Ram is the refuge of the humble.” - From Ramcharitmanas (1574).

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) - “The heart has its reasons… It is the heart which perceives God.” - From Pensées, Section 277.

John Locke (1632–1704) - “The works of nature… plainly evidence a deity.” - From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book IV.

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) - “This most beautiful system… could only proceed from… an intelligent and powerful Being.” - From Principia Mathematica, General Scholium.

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) - “God is the head of the universe.” - From The End for Which God Created the World.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) - “The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me…” - From Critique of Practical Reason, Conclusion.

William Blake (1757–1827) - “To see a World in a Grain of Sand… is to see God.” - From Auguries of Innocence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) - “The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God.” - From Journals (1836).

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) - “Faith is the highest passion… God is that all things are possible.” - From Fear and Trembling.

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) - “The order of living things suggests a purposeful design.” - Implied in letters on genetics.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) - “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” - From The Brothers Karamazov, Book XI.

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) - “Much science brings men back to Him.” - Attributed in speeches.

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) - “To know God is to live.” - From A Confession.

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) - Hindu monk. “Each soul is potentially divine… God is in everything.” - From Raja Yoga (1896).

William James (1842–1910) - “Religion… is a belief in something eternal.” - From The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture II.

G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936) - “God is that wonder.” - From Tremendous Trifles, essay “The Moods of Mr. George Moore.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) - “Reverence for life… stands God.” - From The Philosophy of Civilization.

Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938) - Muslim poet-philosopher. “God is the ultimate Ego, the source of all reality.” - From The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930).

Max Planck (1858–1947) - “God stands for both as the ultimate truth.” - From Where Is Science Going?.

Martin Buber (1878–1965) - “God is the eternal Thou.” - From I and Thou.

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) - “There is an ultimate Creator behind the beauty.” - From The Silmarillion, Ainulindalë.

C.S. Lewis (1898–1963) - “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen…” - From The Weight of Glory, essay “Is Theology Poetry?”.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) - “God is the center.” - From Letters and Papers from Prison.

Mother Teresa (1910–1997) - “God is the friend of silence…” - From A Simple Path.

Billy Graham (1918–2018) - “God has given us the Bible as His Word…” - From Peace with God.

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) - “God’s presence is the only reality.” - From Jesus Rediscovered (1969).

John Polkinghorne (1930–2021) - “The universe… bears the signature of a purposeful design by God.” - From Science and Theology.

Francis Collins (1950–) - “The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome…” - From The Language of God.

Desmond Tutu (1931–2021) - “God is the God of all creation…” - From God Has a Dream.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (1931–2015) - Muslim scientist and Indian President. “God is in the hearts of all… faith elevates us.” - From Wings of Fire (1999).

Dallin H. Oaks (1932–) - Mormon leader. “God’s plan is the plan of happiness.” - From The Great Plan of Happiness (1993), sermon.