There’s nothing much to rebut. We are both at the point of repeating ourselves, I think, so let me just try and be a little clearer (because your response indicates that I wasn’t very clear before).
I’m not disagreeing with any scientific precept you are discussing. I’m not suggesting the big bang isn’t the way the universe started. I’m also not suggesting that life is a game (that was simply an analogy). I am suggesting that the only logical explanation I can come to as an answer to all of these observable, natural truths is that there must be a reason for it. “Just because” or “due to random chance” doesn’t cut mustard for me, and frankly I’m surprised that a person of a scientific mind is content with such an answer. As for evidence, I know we disagree here but the clearest evidence to me for the existence of God is that He left no trace of “magic” or “miracle” in the process. Everything has a logical, scientific solution once we get close enough to observe it. But that still only gets us to the “how.” We are still light years off from the “why.”
This of course requires an amount of religious discourse, but I will keep it as innocuous as I can. Here, too, will I answer more plainly why I am no longer an atheist. If there are logical, scientific rules governing the universe, how inconceivable is it that there are likewise rules governing human behavior? This becomes an attempt to answer the “why.” I came to a point in my life that I was no longer satisfied with “just because” as an answer to that question. Millions of people over the millennia have asked this question and have come up with millions of answers – hence we have a plethora of religious and philosophical beliefs today. They all revolve around one central theme, however, and that is that there are guidelines for human behavior. Just as any evolutionary process has to work through several phases and the proper conditions have to be met for progress, so, too, do humans have to work through their own phases in order to accomplish some eternal goal. Here, we diverge into what that eternal goal is and that, of course, leads us into specific religious ideology which I will not delve into, at least not yet. But the point is simple – there exists both physical and spiritual rules by which all the universe is governed, both in nature and in behavior. I would contend that nature and behavior are not actually separate entities, but 2 sides to the same coin.
It is possible that I am looking for an answer where there is none. It is possible that “just because” or “random chance” are the answers to these questions, in which asking “why” is a worthless endeavor simply for the fact that there is no answer to that question. But I suspect that, if that were true, we would never have progressed to a point that we could have found out that there is no purpose – we would not have had the inspiration to ask such a question. If there is no purpose to this life and there is no answer to the question of why, I suspect we should never have found out that such was the case.
Does this prove God exists? Of course not. I have plainly conceded that no physical evidence exists of that. Likewise, you have conceded that no physical evidence exists that He does not exist. Basically, neither of us can prove (nor disprove) our extraordinary claim through any scientific process. You can’t prove that God didn’t write the rules and start the process (through whatever scientific means He may have employed) just as I can’t prove the universe didn’t start “just because.” All the physical and scientific evidence in the world, though, proves nothing regarding the lack of God. This is why I am no longer atheist. I believe there is a reason, and perhaps I could be charged with not having been a very devoted atheist to begin with, but I believe that there is a purpose and a reason to all of this. For all the scientific research and reasoning, and we are no closer today than we were a million years ago to explaining why we are here or what the purpose is. I want that question answered. You will argue, I suspect, that asking such a question begs the existence of deity. To this I have to question how the scientific mind can be content to stop asking questions and seeking for answers wherever they may be? If both science and religion are the pursuit of truth, why would one or the other be content to seek truth only so far as it does not intrude upon the stomping ground of the other? As you know, religion has been guilty of this sin for years, insisting that science not try to answer various quandaries for fear of it contradicting some doctrinal principle. In modern times, it seems that science is making the same error by insisting that, whatever the answer to the question, it can’t be anything religious for fear of it contradicting some scientific precept – if God did it, then really science can’t explain anything, can it? Simply stated, I am no longer an atheist because I came to realize that these two pursuits of truth are not really at odds. They are merely explaining the world and universe from two different perspectives. More intriguingly, they complement each other in wonderful ways, each informing the other in places that may be lacking. This realization proved to me that I could answer the “why” if I would stop being so insistent on denying some portion of truth when I discovered just because it came from a source I disagreed with. I am no longer atheist because I decided to open my mind to truth from whatever its source. I believe in God because I have come to learn that the pursuit of truth is not one-sided.
This presents a great deal of work to me, as it does to anyone who “finds God.” Religious discipline is just as strict and requires just as much diligence as scientific discipline. It also requires a whole host of searching for what philosophy has the most truth about it – realizing that most religious ideology has some amount of truth. This goes into a whole other tale of why I am a Christian and a Mormon, neither of which is pertinent to this topic now. Suffice it to say that I first decided why I believe as I do, then found schools of thought that spoke to that belief. Thus, I have found my pursuit of truth easier and more rewarding the less I have fought its source and allowed it to flow as it will. I cannot pick the answers that come as I search for truth; I can only choose how I will react when those answers come. What truly matters is that I look. Perhaps that is the only eternal principle; perhaps that is the point of the “game” to which I referred previously. The only thing I know to be true in that regard is that I will someday find the answer so long as I keep looking.
Let’s open the floor. I think we have both said as much as we can say without covering the same ground.
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