Originally posted by amadeus
I recently read an argument that atheists are fools, not for disbelieving in God, but for believing too much in themselves...
-snip-
Atheism, on the contrary, seems a close-minded position. The atheist sees himself as the master of a universe in which he is the sole bearer of truth. In the atheist's mind there is no doubt, no sense of insecurity, no possibility that he might be wrong without realizing it. Unlike most people, the atheist is not bothered by the fact that his feeling of certainty is not shared by the absolute majority of people around him;
-snip-
Conventional wisdom has concluded the Universe must have come from somewhere, and the idea that it was ushered into existence by some primordial nascent event appeals seductively to human intuition. The very process of thought is governed by cause and effect, so scholars instinctively employ that principle in their quest to solve the ultimate mystery of the Universe. Proponents of 'Big Bang' espouse a theory of singularity which envisions a Universe cast from the bowels of a spontaneous cosmic eruption. Many contemporary religions believe a devine act of creation gave birth to the infinite cosmos. Both science and theology portray a source of creation - a spawning force of natural or supernatural origin. From cosmologists to clergy, the presumption that the Universe began is quietly accepted without question.
The existence of nothing ostensibly requires no justification, so most theories of Universal origin begin with a primal void. At the 'beginning of time' a transformation must have taken place, and the physical manifestation of the cosmos resulted. But creation would require a creator - the very presence of which would violate the original contention that nothing existed. Even if that inconsistency is ignored, whatever sired the Universe must, too, have been created by some predecessor which, in turn, must have been predated by a limitless procession of ancestry. The endless cycle of chicken-and-the-egg redundancy which results from a cause and effect approach to the enigma of existence implies no logical 'beginning'.
Supernatural versions of creation sidestep the issue of redundancy with the assertion that whatever created the Universe was not subject to the laws of nature. Of course, when the laws of nature are discarded anything is possible, even the absurd. If immunity could be alleged on one occasion, why could it not be invoked for every natural occurrence. To claim exemption from the laws of nature is to refute logic, itself.
Before something can change - act or be acted upon - it must first exist. The process of 'change' is always explained in terms of cause and effect - action and reaction. Conditions - or states of being - change during the process of cause and effect, but existence is not a condition or a state of being, it is being, itself. And if being is required in order for change to occur then cause and effect is a function of the phenomenon of existence. This is the very antithesis of the premise that existence is the product of a process - a manifestation or transformation commonly called creation.
If it is not logical to believe that the Universe
began, how would it be logical to believe there was a
creator?
Theory of Reciprocity
Like I mentioned in another post, existence is subjective and in the eye of the believer. You can't prove God exists anymore than I can prove the universe is infinite. We must each find the truth within ourselves.