How many impossible things do you need to believe to not believe in God?
There is a decision to make.
Whether to believe in the existence of a single intelligent creator responsible for the complexity of the universe and life on earth – or to believe that an unimaginable number of spontaneous events somehow happened in order to bring about the same result, out of nothing.
The main difference as I see it, is that one scenario raises the possibility of us being accountable to a Creator God, and that can be a scary prospect for some people.
Over the past few days I’ve had a small discussion with a few unbelievers on a secular news site.
One of the responders asked a version of that old, naïve question:
…how do you explain your ‘single intelligent creator’, does he just pop into existence from, er, nothing?
Basically, if the universe and life within it required a creator, who created that creator?
To some that question must seem the pinnacle of sophistication – the argument to end all arguments, and yet there is a very clear and obvious answer that does not favour the doubter’s assumption.
The Bible describes God as being eternal with no beginning or end.
But Science recognises that the universe DID have a beginning.
Therefore, unlike the universe (according to the materialist viewpoint), God did not need to “just pop into existence from nothing”.
As for the question of how many impossible things need to be accepted in order to disbelieve in a Creator God, the following response in the same discussion shows how willing people can be to practice all manner of irrational, intellectual gymnastics to close their eyes and minds to God.
That ‘unimaginable’ number of spontaneous events took place over an equally unimaginable expanse of space and time, and if the many-worlds interpretation is correct, over an almost infinitely large number of universes. From another perspective, given these conditions, that series of spontaneous events had to occur somewhere, at some time. It just happens that here and now is where they occurred.
Just look at the many assumptions and speculations required to fuel that argument.
1) The assumption that given enough time, anything can happen no matter how improbable or impossible.
(Excepting the existence of a Creator to whom His creation might be accountable, of course)
2) If the “many-worlds interpretation is correct.
(One might as well say “if the easter bunny was real, chocolate eggs would magically appear at easter. Again – an avoidance of pondering whether the Creator God “interpretation” could be correct.)
3) An almost infinitely large number of universes?
(So now we have the existence of an infinite number of universes that spontaneously appeared, not just one).
4) Given all of those imagined conditions then this very real universe had to appear out of nothing.
(Do I need to comment further on that?)
So I’ll return to my original question…
How many impossible things does someone need to believe to not believe in God?