If a tree is planted with its roots severed, it will look as green as any other plant to start with, but, on the very next day, its leaves will start drying up, and will goon drying up, for very soon the tree will die. This is exactly what has happened to atheism and disbelief in religion. In the beginning it looked as if atheism was flourishing, religion had become a thing of the past and the world had entered an age of irreligion. But this was a short--lived phenomenon, principally because it was rootless. And now religion has bounced back with renewed vigour. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, there was a strong wave of what was popularly called scientific atheism. But new scientific investigations carried out at the beginning of the 20th century started turning the tide against its credibility. At the beginning of the 20th century Sir James Jeans declared that the universe which had been discovered by modern Science was not compatible with mechanical interpretations. And now that we are in the 21st century, there are an increasing number of theoretical physicists whose explanation, "If the world makes the existence of God imperative without His Being, no explanation of the world is possible". In a 200-page book, published in 1988, entitled A Brief History of Time, Stephen W. Hawking (one of the foremost physicists of the modern age) explains the Big Bang Theory, according to which the universe is constantly expanding at a fixed speed. After working out the relevant mathematical equations, Hawking has reached the conclusion that the expansion of the universe is taking place according to a well calculated scheme. The initial rate of expansion must have been fixed with great accuracy so that it would always be less than the critical rate, i.e. the rate at which the universe would begin to recollapse. If the 'big bang' model is correct, and time started from this point, the initial condition of the universe would have exploded and come to an end a very long time ago. This view cannot be explained unless it is accepted that the rate of expansion of the universe has been determined with the utmost pre--science. Stephen Hawking writes: It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us. (p. 134). One of the most amazing qualities of the universe is that no interpretation of it, other than that which accepts God's existence, can explain it, despite the best brains in every age having attempted to unravel its mysteries. It has been claimed that the universe has always been in existence in its present form. It has also been claimed that it came into being on its own and that it goes on its own. Cause and effect have been said to have created everything, and attempts have also been made to prove the law of evolution to be the creator of the universe. But all this has been disproved by the knowledge man has acquired. The more a man learns about the universe, the more absurd do these theories appear to him; the more strange does it seem that something, or someone other than God Almighty should be the Lord and Master of the Universe. The universe, by its very existence, testifies to the fact that God is its Creator. To say that something, or someone else, is Master of the universe is to make a claim which is utterly without foundation. Whatever arguments or opposing opinions have been expressed to propagate this theory have been proved erroneous by the knowledge acquired to date through human research.

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