Words'nTone

Every time I ask an atheist, whether personally or through a blog, group board, or website, where did the known, physical universe come from—how did it begin?  I usually receive no answer, or the comment, “We’ve been through this before.” But when I say, “Can you explain it again,” no answer is given.  There is no doubt that there is an element of “faith” for the atheist regarding the origin (or dare say, non-origin) of the universe, and additionally, there is the lack of scientific explanation for the origin of the universe.  I repeat, who has determined that we live in a closed universe where the only way to “prove” things such as the existence of God, origins of the universe, angels, heaven, and hell must be scientific and not logical?  What’s wrong with reason as a method for determining the soundness of one’s conclusion concerning the original of creation?

The very “logic” used by atheists isn’t scientific (ironically), and seems to betray their insistence that there are no eternal, immaterial, non-changing things in this universe.  (Really how do they know that?) For the laws of logic are indeed immaterial, eternal, and non-changing.  Furthermore, what was before time began?  What was there before there was space?  It is hard for atheist to imagine what it was like before time and before space, for such imagining is indeed an almost impossible (and I might add, implausible) scientific pursuit that actually is a faith statement about one’s worldview—not a scientific answer.

If the atheist stipulates, that explaining what was before time and space cannot be imagined, “chance” then becomes, as Steve Turner once penned, “the Father of all flesh.” Chance brought this meaningless existence, rhymeless physical universe into being.  Steve Turner writes, so playfully, but poignantly, in his poem called “Chance”:

     If chance be the Father of all flesh,
     disaster is his rainbow in the sky,
     and when you hear
     State of Emergency! 
     Sniper Kills Ten! 
     Troops on Rampage! 
     Whites go Looting! 
     Bomb Blasts School!
     It is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.

The difficultly in imagining the creation of our physical and known universe where there is no material becoming material, along with no time and no space at one point becoming time and space leads to an even more devastating imagination of a universe without an eternal, all-powerful, holy, immutable Being.  Steve Turner reminds us what is left to imagine within an atheistic worldview and the plague of living with an atheistic faith in no-thing, just chance.

© Chip M. Anderson (October 2008)
    Words’nTone, Habits of the Mind,

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