The Day I Stopped Being an Atheist
A universe that can make itself is either impossible…or really cool!
I believe in God.
I was not raised that way, however. I had to come to it myself.
Back in December,
wrote a piece documenting some of the reasons why he is no longer an atheist. It occurred to me then that it might be interesting to share my story. (Naturally, Christmas and other things intervened, so I am only getting around to it now.)Where Max’s story is rather complicated (be sure to have your morning coffee before diving in!), mine is much simpler. Indeed, it happened all in a day.
No, I did not have a near-death experience or glimpse the transcendent through the use of psychedelics…though both of those are certainly pathways that people follow. For me it was (and I know long-time readers will find this super-shocking) a philosophical argument that did the trick!
(If you were hoping for a human-interest-type story about me nearly getting hit by a train and being rescued by angels, I apologize. But stick with me—I think the philosophical conclusions are fairly compelling.)
As background, I was raised to be an atheist. My parents, and most of my extended family, not only don’t believe, but generally think that people who do are gullible and, frankly, less intellectually advanced. (The latter is, of course, a common enough view among atheists.) I have already told you a fair amount about my journey away from the left-wingery of my upbringing, and how it began in my teens. The moment I am about to describe should rightly be considered a part of that journey.
I was 18 years old, sitting in my Philosophy of Religion class at the University of St. Andrews. Outside the window was a quad that students had trodden for almost 600 years. Inside the window was a professor doing an excellent job of explaining the arguments for and against the existence of God.
I was interested, but still a committed (albeit callow) atheist. Then it happened.
The professor laid out the Cosmological Argument—the argument that seeks to answer the most fundamental question: Why is there something rather than nothing? Why does existence exist?
I still roughly recall the form of the argument from the textbook:
1. Some contingent beings exist.
2. If any contingent beings exist, there must be a necessary being to explain their existence.
.˙. Only God is such a being.
Then the professor began to run through the standard objections and replies.
Objection 1:
What necessary being explains God’s existence?
In other words, if you explain the universe’s existence by positing a God, how do you explain God’s existence? Where did God come from? He then laid out the standard reply:
Reply 1:
God, by definition, is the non-contingent First Cause and does not require a necessary being.
In other words, God is the one thing that does not require a cause. God is the First Cause.
This, of course, leaves the atheist frustrated. His surrebuttal is to complain that that reply simply defines away the problem. It seems a form of question-begging, in which the truth of the conclusion is assumed and justified by the definition.
I don’t recall the professor’s exact wording here (it has been 35 years!), but my conceptual takeaway was something like this:
Surrebuttal 1:
Why is it more reasonable to say that God does not require a necessary being than it would be to say that the Universe does not require a necessary being?
This was the first crack in the edifice…
At this moment, I stopped simply accepting the conclusions of my upbringing. I stopped writing down what the professor was saying. At this moment, I started to think. The thought process—which has obviously become more refined over time—went something like this:
Okay, instead of looking at the definition as a copout, let’s follow it a bit further down the road. What are the core characteristics of even a simple, deistic God?
Divine Creativity, i.e., being the First Cause of all contingent beings, and
Divine Eternality/Non-contingency, i.e., always being there, requiring no First Cause to explain existence, not capable of not-existing. Timelessness.
These are basic definitional minimums for divinity. It still kicks the can on the Cosmological Argument, but I wasn’t done. What I realized later that day, and to a more sophisticated degree over time, is this:
Either God must possess the definitional minimums for divinity or the Universe must. Thus, either God is divine or, in some sense, the Universe is.
This appealed to me very much. I was always more fanciful and spiritually inclined than most of the rest of my family, and my atheism did not really sit particularly well. Some sort of pantheism/pandeism…now that was a much better fit, especially for my 18-year-old self. I have gone further since, of course, but that was the beginning.
Let’s face it—the cosmological question is right at the edge of our conceptual thresholds. Try imagining “nothing.” Try imagining a time before existence. But then, try imagining that existence has always existed. What is more mind-blowing—infinity or the possibility of something other than infinity?
To me, imbuing the universe with a kind of divinity made sense, emotionally and logically. I decided that, in essence, atheism is not possible. Either God has the characteristics of divinity or the universe does. Pandeism seemed to me the logical minimum level of belief.
In more formal terms,
1. Either the Universe as a whole is timeless/eternal and non-contingent, and the First Cause of the contingencies within it, or it was created by an external force.
2. If the Universe was created by an external force, God, by basic definition, is that external force.
3. If the Universe as a whole is timeless/eternal and non-contingent and is the First Cause of all the contingencies within it, then it possesses the two basic characteristics of divinity.
.˙. Either God exists or the Universe is divine.
When I had that realization, however inchoate at the time, my atheism evaporated into the infinite infinity of Infinity. And that was that.
I cannot do this without you. If you find my work valuable, please consider throwing a cup of coffee my way (not literally) once a month.
This: Let’s face it—the cosmological question is right at the edge of our conceptual thresholds. Try imagining “nothing.” Try imagining a time before existence. But then, try imagining that existence has always existed. What is more mind-blowing—infinity or the possibility of something other than infinity?
I was raised evangelical. I rebelled. I tried valiantly to be an atheist for years and years. There was always this voice inside me that said "No, you are not!" Then, something happened I cannot explain. Around 50-ish I started reading a lot of origin of life stuff. LSS, I converted to Catholicism. I know a lot of people don't like the Catholics. It was my window in. Do I struggle with my faith. Hell yeah. Alas, I love the struggle. I think the struggle is part of what makes it so meaningful.
great story!
atheists like to point to causal relationships and consequences all the way up to the Big Bang when the Universe created everything out of nothing. as Terrance McKenna points out “the one miracle science will allow, is the greatest miracle of all”.
at some point in my life I had to admit that believing an entire Universe sprang from nothing spontaneously was actually was far more ignorant than presupposing a creator. the fact that many ‘intellectuals’ were perfectly fine with this absurd explanation said more about them than any argument. in fact, every so called ‘atheist’ I’ve ever met, once I scratched beneath the surface a bit, proved to be more motivated by an irrational hatred of religious dogma than an objective observer carefully weighing rational arguments.
having said that, the concept of Eternity might always be somewhat of a paradox for us humans to ultimately comprehend...