You don't have to be Catholic to appreciate the historic significance of Pope John Paul II's death Saturday. For countless millions, even though the Pope has no official role in their Church (or Synagogue or Mosque), in the wake of his death, it's difficult not to consider the nature of life and whatever lies beyond.
I feel strongly that religious freedom is one of our country's greatest virtues and believe everyone is entitled to worship -- or not worship -- as they see fit. That said, there's a particular perspective on religion I find difficult to understand: atheism.
Before you write an angry letter, let me make clear that I don't want to persecute or force my beliefs onto anyone. I don't think you can prove that any one concept of a divine power -- be it the Christian God, Allah or, for that matter, Zeus -- is the right one. But for two reasons, I think atheism is illogical.
First, to be truly atheist requires not just skepticism about the existence of God, but an actual denial of any deity in any form. This raises the difficult, if not insurmountable task of proving a negative. An atheist may say, "Look at all the suffering! God wouldn't allow this," but when a believer responds, "It's all part of his plan," the atheist is stuck between a rock and a hard place. How can you prove it isn't part of a plan? It seems that at the very least, one must leave open the possibility of a god.
But even more importantly, I think there's a logical way to demonstrate that some sort of god has to exist. My reasoning is this: Our understanding of existence dictates that everything has a beginning and end. At some point, everything -- from the trees outside the window to the chair you're sitting in -- was created from various components. It's even true of something as elemental as mountains, which countless millenniums ago were forged through geological phenomena and, given enough time, will eventually erode. The paper you now hold came from a tree that came from water and a seed and so on.
Among scientific theories of creation, the Big Bang is by far the most accepted. Based upon it, if you were to trace the origin of all matter back far enough, you'd eventually arrive back at a primeval atom whose explosion led to the universe as we know it. That's all well and good, and explains how we all came to exist, except for the origin of that initial atom.
You might suppose that some unimaginably complex space phenomenon created the atom. Fine, but in that case, from where did that phenomenon come? To me, the inescapable conclusion is that some sort of timeless entity that is exempt from the laws of creation as we understand them. Whatever this exempt entity is, it was capable of something we think of as impossible: creating something from nothing.
Don't misunderstand; I'm not condescending to the non-religious. I think agnosticism (the belief that it's impossible to prove the existence or non-existence of a god) is a cogent, defendable position. Another concept that seems to stand up to scrutiny is deism (the belief that a god is responsible for creation, but doesn't interfere with the goings-on of the world).
Live and let live, and to each his or her own, but, in my humble opinion, atheism is difficult to back up.
Write to Jake at
jymoore@bsu.edu
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