This post is my submission for the "Faith" edition of the Blog Carnival.
Many atheists reveal that their main obstacle to belief is their revulsion to the concept of faith. Not a revulsion to reasonable, everyday faith (like sitting in a chair and believing it will hold you up), but specifically to faith in an unseen, intelligent creator of the universe.
It's an understandable objection. I'm disgusted with the beliefs of many people in my own church on the subject. Very few who claim to be Christians have any interest in subjecting their beliefs to scrutiny of any kind, and some end up elevating faith to a form of deity all its own. Faith then becomes a force we can utilize to shape our own destinies. Many evangelists (especially the TV kind) would lead you to believe that if you would only have enough faith and "speak positive words into your life" then nothing bad would ever happen to you.
Of course, this philosophy cannot stand up under even the slightest actual examination of Jewish or Christian scripture, but that's of no concern to "Word of Faith" followers. It's the religious equivalent of a get rich quick scheme. "Don't bore me with doctrine. I'm only interested in what makes me feel good about myself. And if I get results, what I believe must be correct."
So this oft held pseudo-Christian concept of faith has admittedly earned much of the distain Christianity as a whole receives from atheists. However, a philosophy cannot logically be judged by the actions and beliefs of those who claim to follow it.
I believe that the faith the Bible calls Christians to have is one based in sound reason, not in unquestioning acceptance.
The more science discovers in the pursuit of truth, the more convincing the evidence for a God becomes. In the past century we've gone from believing that the universe has eternally existed to all but proving that the universe had a definite beginning. Of course, if a creator does exist then this is exactly what one would expect to discover.
Science must deal with what is measurable and observable. This logically includes anything within our universe, and at the same time excludes anything that might exist outside of it. Therefore, any theory about what might exist beyond our scope of observation is pure speculation with no hope of ever being proven through research.
The consequence of this fact is obvious: All theories about what caused the Big Bang that began our universe -- whether it is a god, an extra-dimensional infinite universe generator, a Big Crunch, or even a spaghetti monster -- are inescapably unscientific. Ironically, this unanswerable question is the most profoundly important question in science. In fact, the pursuit of this question looms as the very foundation of science itself.
So how can we approach it? To hold any convictions about the origin of the universe requires faith in that which is unseen and unmeasurable. Since that is the case, only logic -- not evidence -- can guide us to a feasible conclusion.
We know that our universe cannot have always existed. Not only could the cosmos not have passed through an infinite number of moments to reach any specific point in time (i.e. "now"), but the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that the universe would have dispersed all of its energy an eternity ago. Our universe would be cold, dark, and lifeless.
If we say that the Big Bang was preceded by a Big Crunch, that merely begs the question. It's as pointless as theorizing that life on Earth was created by aliens. You are then forced to ask, "Who created the aliens?" A universal cycle of expansion and contraction cannot have been occurring for an infinite length of time for the same reasons I stated in the last paragraph, so we must also rule out this "oscillatory universe" theory.
How about some sort of extra-dimensional "universe generator", churning out an infinite number of possible universes that exist parallel to each other? Okay. I have no problem with that idea. But where did it come from? What created the "universe creator" with such a purpose? Might there just as easily be a "'Universe creator' creator"?
Hopefully you're beginning to see the problem. No matter what natural explanation we invent to explain the origin of the universe, the need for a cause behind the cause always arises. Why?
Here are two things that we know to be true logically:
1) Every event ever observed has had a cause.
2) Every decision originates in a mind.
The universe as we know it is the product of a chain of causes. At the beginning of this chain sits an explosion that resulted in the existence of everything we know -- matter, energy, even time itself. By necessity this explosion had to be caused by something, and as I have already demonstrated, it is not logical to assume that this cause was something else of which the same question must be asked. So an uncaused cause must exist at the root of all things. And the only logical uncaused cause must be capable of making the decision to create our universe at a specific, measurable point in time. Therefore, the only logical uncaused cause must be a transcendent intelligence.
If you just experienced a negative knee-jerk reaction to that statement, I urge you to ask yourself why. Is your objection like Einstein's initial objection to the Big Bang; that it sounds too much like the God of Christianity being forced into the realm of science? By no means should we appeal to the miraculous in order to explain away causes we have not yet discovered in our universe, but we are not speaking of a gap in understanding. We are speaking of the event that created understanding, time, physicality, and ultimately our capacity for pondering these things in the first place.
So ask yourself, "Which faith is more reasonable?": Faith that our amazing universe -- full of staggering complexity built upon profound simplicity, with life arising and thriving seemingly in defiance of every natural law -- has a purpose, and that the need for an uncaused cause is inescapable, or faith that the existence of our universe is pure happenstance, a cosmic accident; that every beautiful thing we observe that leaves us awe-stricken is without meaning or value, and that defying all logic and reason our universe burst into existence with no cause whatsoever?
Barring empirical evidence to support either faith, I have to go with the faith that logic leads me to hold.
I thank God that he made the choice so obvious.
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