“Does God Exist?”
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
The collection of works by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, translated into English
1932
“Does God Exist?”, 1st version
Extreme date of writing – 1932. Method of reproduction – typewriting with the author’s edits. Location of the original – Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Fund No. 555, Inventory 1, Case No. 490
And you and many others ask me if there is a God.
Before you can answer that question, you need to know what you mean by that word.
There are as many nations and as many people as there are different conceptions of God. Which of them corresponds to scientific truth, and is there still one?
And now the French have the days of the week named after the 5 planets, the Moon and the Sun, which were considered to be Gods.
Such Gods, of course, there are, because it is impossible to deny existence of planets and the Sun, but only the concept about them at ancients was incorrect.
If you mean Jews and Christians of different denominations (Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, etc.), their teachings are only vague hints of the truth with many harmful misconceptions, ridiculous fables and superstitions.
The ancient sages, the creators of religions, were based, of course, on the contemplation of nature. But their knowledge of the cosmos was very weak, as sciences (the recorded accumulation of knowledge of all times and peoples) hardly existed then. It is clear that their conclusions, their worldviews could be neither complete nor correct. The followers of sages even more distorted the teachings of the ancients.
Could there be, for example, true ideas about the origin of the universe, when even the Earth seemed to people flat and uncertain size, when the Earth was the center of the universe, and everything else existed only to serve the Earth!
The absence of physiology made it necessary to suppose a special thing (soul) in man which animated him. When it left the body, the body also became dead or lifeless. Some later thinkers assumed the same thing in animals, and others, on the contrary, even very brilliant (Descartes), considered animals without souls, i.e. non-sentient automata.
The riddle of the existence and appearance of man (solved now) prompted to accept the hypothesis of the existence of an omnipotent being who created man from clay (like a sculptor) with the addition of a spirit.
We need to create a scientific definition of God if we are not to part with the word.
Is there not something that disposes of us, that we depend on, that created us, that gave us reason and knowledge of the universe, that favors its creature, gives it eternity and happiness?
If we conditionally call this something God, we will find the answer to our question.
The universe disposes of us: its rarefied gases formed the suns, the planets separated from the suns, life was conceived on the planets, which, developing and improving, created man and beings above him. We ourselves, our thoughts, our deeds are the creation of the universe. Also all our infinite past and the same future are formed by its will. Our will is only a manifestation of the will of the cosmos.
So, we see that the universe with its million billion suns and many more planets with their inhabitants already partially fits our definition of God.
We even have the right to endow our conditional God with such properties, which the universe possesses according to modern scientific data.
All of it consists of an unchanging number of eternal hydrogen atoms (conditionally, because hydrogen is also complex). Suns, planets, humans, and the more mature beings of other planets are made up of them.
By virtue of this, if part of the universe (organisms) is sentient, then the entire universe is capable of the same. Hence the conclusion is that our God (cosmos) is eternal, unchanging, living, and we are parts of it and therefore like it. Can we cease to live if the whole is always alive!
Death is only the transition of one state of matter into another, from one feeling to another of a different tension. It is a new grouping of hydrogen atoms. Simple passes into complex, complex into simple. And this is repeated countless times, for time has no end, just as it has no beginning.
Our God (the cosmos) as we, its parts, always have been and always will be.
The overall appearance of the universe is always the same. If some suns are extinguished, others are kindled; if some planets are destroyed, others are formed; if some intelligent beings die, others are reborn.
From this we see that our God (the cosmos) has, on the whole, a constant figure.
Some parts of the universe have intense life (beings), while others have very weak, imperceptible life, without memory, consciousness, or intelligence.
But since matter (matter composed of atoms, hydrogen) is continually stirring (explosions of suns, planets, creation of new ones, etc.), there is not a single hydrogen atom that has not participated countless times in organic life. All these lives seem to merge into one infinite life, since the vast intervals of residence in inorganic matter (conditional nothingness) are not marked by memory and seem not to exist. Consequently, every atom of our God, and thus also we ourselves, its parts, seem to live a continuous intensive organic life. This further confirms that God and we do not only exist in life, but also live (subjectively) a continuous organic life.
What is this life of God, i.e. its parts – animals and plants? We know that on earth animals and humans are tormented, destroying each other cruelly, sick, dying, needy, subject to disasters, etc. Is this the general life of the universe or is it different?
Millions of billions of planets have existed for a long time and therefore their animals have reached a maturity that we will also reach in millions of years of life awaiting us on Earth.
This maturity manifests itself in a perfect intelligence, a deep knowledge of nature and a technical power that makes other celestial bodies accessible to the inhabitants of space.
Reason says to these beings: there must be no imperfection and suffering in the universe, otherwise we ourselves will suffer and be subjected to this imperfection and evil. And so the mature beings on all planets, thanks to their technical power, bring truth, knowledge, joy and strength everywhere. They do not let matter suffer for hundreds of thousands of years to gradually reach maturity in the form of higher beings. Evolution is rejected as a long suffering journey, and is replaced by the reproduction of ready-made perfect organisms and their propagation on the planets.
Hence the conclusion: God (the cosmos) does not contain in himself torment and imperfection, but is good to himself, and therefore also to us – his parts. In truth, he (the cosmos) can be called a father and fits our definition of God. Such a God does exist, for we cannot deny the existence of the universe, its dominion, goodness and perfection.
“Does God Exist?”, 2nd version
Extreme date of writing – 03.1932. Method of reproduction – typewriting with the author’s editing. Location of the original – Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Fund No. 555, Inventory 1, Case No. 491
The answer to the question depends on what we mean by the word.
The sun was honored as a god. It is the source of all organic life on Earth and humanity. Without the Sun, everything would perish.
With this definition of the word god, it is clear that it exists. We can only say that this god has no mind and the ancients were wrong to attribute consciousness to him.
Plato and Christians define the word god differently. They say that god is love, more precisely, those ideas that lead people and even all living things to good. If these ideas are not known now, they theoretically exist. So god also exists.
From this point of view – when there is no love among people, there is no god among them, if there is, then god reigns among them. So there is god on some planets and no god on others.
Another definition of the word god can be made. God is that which disposes of all of us, on which the life and fate of people, the life and happiness of all existing things, the fate of suns and planets, the fate of all living and dead depends.
And there is such a god, because it is the universe. It orders everything and determines the fate of everything in it.
The power and might of the cosmos cannot be doubted. The suns were born from gaseous rarefied simple matter. The Earth came from one of these suns. From the Earth came plants. From plants came animals, from them came man. After all, everything has its origin in the infinite past: from the arrangement and properties of atoms to the laws that govern them. But all these things do not depend on us, on the contrary, we depend on them. Man has a mind, a will. But after all, they are derived from animals, animals are derived from plants, etc. All this is not ours, but given to us by the universe and its laws.
The cosmos rules over us, over us. There is no absolute will, we are puppets, mechanical puppets, automatons, movie heroes….
If we consider a certain reasonable being like a human being, but incomparably more powerful and perfect, to be a god, then we will talk about gods, because there are a lot of these extraordinary, high animals in the universe, and of various ranks.
For example, there are extraordinary people on the Earth, so-called sages, geniuses, scientists. They were in times gone by. History points us to them. It is impossible to compare them with average people, as their deeds were unusually great. Their deeds were immortal and brought undying, eternal, endless fruit. Take Newton, who discovered universal gravitation, Laplace, who explained the world system, the inventors of steam engines, diesel engines, turbines, etc. as an example. Have they not left an inextinguishable trace, do they not live among us and do we not take advantage of a genius that never runs out.
But mankind goes forward. From dead matter came single-celled creatures, from them plants, from plants animals more and more complex, more and more cunning. And so it came to man. On him, however, nature will not stop, as it did not stop, for example, on fish. From the fish came, by gradual development, man. From him will also come more perfect beings. Where the end of their development is, and whether it is there, no one knows.
The higher man may get better health, longevity, perfect intelligence, technical power, etc.; all this can neither be foreseen nor imagined by us.
So much for the gods from this point of view!
There are many planets older than the Earth. They have already developed these higher beings that we only dream of. So the universe is full of them. They do not represent a curiosity in the cosmos, but on the contrary, a commonplace phenomenon. The small age of Earth and similar planets with immature populations is an exception. The world is full of such gods.
We can go further. Each mature planet is unified, i.e. their intelligent population. It is ruled by a single chosen one, the best, most perfect being on the planet.
The presidents of the planets are already gods of the highest order.
All planets of each sun are also united. This is already the basis for the existence of rulers of solar systems – gods of the third rank.
The unification can go further: for a group of suns, a star heap, the Milky Way, an etheric island, and so endlessly, until it reaches the unification of the whole cosmos. This supreme god is generated by the universe and may be the cosmos itself.
So, we must recognize the existence of many gods of different ranks. The higher they are, the farther they are from man, the more incomprehensible to him.
If we cannot conceive of a future supreme man, the primary god, then how can we understand the structure and quality of the gods of the higher ranks, much less the last, the highest ruler. Whether he is the cosmos itself, or some allotment of it, so to speak, a personal god (some remote likeness of the highest imaginable man), it is difficult to say. His form, dimensions, organs, properties, etc. – all these are completely inadmissible to our knowledge.
However, taking the universe infinite, which is very probable, there would be no end to the ranks of deities.
But it is possible how to understand it. Let us take as an example a united planet of any solar system. Her nearest god, of greatest importance to her, is the president of the planet. Less often it deals with the ruler of the solar system, even less often with the president of the solar group, and so on without end.
“Does God Exist?”
(Response to G.P.’s letter of 15.05.1931). Extreme date of writing – 23.06.1931. Method of reproduction – typewriting. Location of the original – Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Fund No. 555, Inventory 1, Case No. 474
And you and many others ask me if there is a god.
Before you can answer that question, you need to know what you mean by that word.
There are as many nations and as many people as there are different ideas about God. Which of them corresponds to scientific truth, and is there still one?
And now the French have the days of the week named after the 5 planets, the Moon and the Sun, which were considered to be gods.
Such gods, of course, there are, because it is impossible to deny existence of planets and the Sun, but only concept about them at ancients was incorrect.
If you mean Jews and Christians of different religions (Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, etc.), then their doctrine is only vague hints of truth with many harmful misconceptions, ridiculous fables and superstitions.
The ancient sages, the creators of religions, were based, of course, on the contemplation of nature. But their cognition of the cosmos was very weak, as sciences (the recorded accumulation of knowledge of all times and peoples) almost did not exist then. It is clear that their conclusions, their worldviews could be neither complete nor correct. The followers of the sages even more distorted the teachings of the ancients.
Could there be, for example, true ideas about the origin of the universe, when even the Earth seemed to people flat and undefined, when the Earth was the center of the universe, and everything else existed only to serve the Earth!
The absence of physiology made it necessary to assume a special thing (soul) in man that animated him. When it left the body, the body also became dead or lifeless. Some later thinkers assumed the same thing in animals, and others, on the contrary, even very brilliant (Descartes), considered animals without souls, i.e. non-sentient automatons.
The riddle of the existence and appearance of man (solved now) prompted to accept the hypothesis of the existence of an omnipotent being who created man out of clay (like a sculptor) with the addition of a spirit.
We need to create a scientific definition of god if we are not to part with the word.
Is there not something that disposes of us, that we depend on, that created us, that gave us reason and knowledge of the universe, that favors its creature, gives it eternity and happiness?
If we conditionally call this something God, we will find the answer to our question.
We are ordered by the universe; its rarefied gases formed the suns, the planets separated from the suns, and on the planets life was conceived, which, developing and perfecting, created man and the beings above him. We ourselves, our thoughts, our deeds, are the creation of the universe. Also all our infinite past and the same future are formed by its will. Our will is only a manifestation of the will of the cosmos.
So, we see that the universe with its million billion suns and many more planets with their inhabitants already partially fits our definition of God.
We even have the right to endow our conditional god with such properties, which the universe possesses according to modern scientific data.
All of it consists of an unchanging number of eternal hydrogen atoms (conditionally, because hydrogen is also complex). Suns and planets and humans and the more mature beings of other planets are made up of them.
By virtue of this, if part of the universe (organisms) is sentient, then the entire universe is capable of the same. Hence the conclusion is that our god (cosmos) is eternal, unchanging, living, and we are parts of it and therefore like it. Can we cease to live if the whole is always alive!
Death is only the transition of one state of matter into another, from one feeling to another of a different tension. It is a new grouping of hydrogen atoms. Simple passes into complex, complex into simple. And this is repeated countless times, as time has no end, just as it has no beginning.
Our god (the cosmos) as we, its parts, always have been and always will be.
The overall appearance of the universe is always the same. If some suns are extinguished, others are kindled; if some planets are destroyed, others are formed; if some intelligent beings die, others are reborn.
From this we see that our god (the cosmos) has, on the whole, a constant figure.
Some parts of the universe have intense life (beings), while others have very weak, imperceptible life, without memory, consciousness, or reason.
But since matter (matter composed of hydrogen atoms) is continually stirring (explosions of suns, planets, creation of new ones, etc.), there is not a single hydrogen atom that has not participated countless times in organic life. All these lives seem to merge into one infinite life, since the vast intervals of residence in inorganic matter (conditional nothingness) are not marked by memory and seem not to exist. Consequently, each atom of our god, and thus we ourselves, its parts, seem to live a continuous intensive organic life. This confirms that God and we do not only exist in life, but also live (subjectively) a continuous organic life.
What is this life of God, i.e. its parts – animals and plants? We know that on earth animals and humans are tormented, destroying each other cruelly, getting sick, dying, needy, disasters, etc. Is this the general life of the universe or is it different?
Millions of billions of planets have existed for a long time and therefore their animals have reached a maturity that we too will reach in millions of years of life awaiting us on Earth.
This maturity manifests itself in a perfect intelligence, a deep knowledge of nature and a technical power that makes other celestial bodies accessible to the inhabitants of space.
Reason says to these beings: there must be no imperfection and suffering in the universe, otherwise we ourselves will suffer and be subjected to this imperfection and evil. And so the mature beings on all planets, thanks to their technical power, bring truth, knowledge, joy and strength everywhere. They do not let matter suffer for hundreds of thousands of years to gradually reach maturity in the form of higher beings. Evolution is rejected as a long suffering path, and is replaced by the reproduction of ready-made perfect organisms and their propagation on the planets.
Hence the conclusion: god (the cosmos) does not contain torment and imperfection, but is good to himself, and therefore also to us – his parts. Truly, he (the cosmos) can be called a father and fits our definition of god. Such a god does exist, for one cannot deny the existence of the universe, its dominion, goodness and perfection.
© Translated into English by Mykola Krasnostup
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